t has set its knee on the captive's
back, and seems ready to despatch him. But suddenly it stops, hesitates,
and looks about with uncertain eyes, and its expression is one of
languid disgust, as though weariness had seized it.

And this is how the work of Richard Strauss appears to me up to the
present. Guntram kills Duke Robert, and immediately lets fall his sword.
The frenzied laugh of Zarathustra ends in an avowal of discouraged
impotence. The delirious passion of Don Juan dies away in nothingness.
Don Quixote when dying forswears his illusions. Even the Hero himself
admits the futility of his work, and seeks oblivion in an indifferent
Nature. Nietzsche, speaking of the artists of our time, laughs at "those
Tantaluses of the will, rebels and enemies of laws, who come, broken in
spirit, and fall at the foot of the cross of Christ." Whether it is for
the sake of the Cross or Nothingness, these heroes renounce their
victories in disgust and despair, or with a resignation that is sadder
still. It was not thus that Beethoven overcame his sorrows. Sad adagios
make their lament in the middle of his symphonies, but a note of joy and
triumph is always sounded at the end. His work is the triumph of a
conquered hero; that of Strauss is the defeat of a conquering hero. This
irresoluteness of the will can be still more clearly seen in
contemporary German literature, and in particular in the author of _Die
versunkene Glocke_. But it is more striking in Strauss, because he is
more heroic. And so we get all this display of superhuman will, and the
end is only "My desire is gone!"

In this lies the undying worm of German thought--I am speaking of the
thought of the choice few who enlighten the present and anticipate the
future. I see an heroic people, intoxicated by its triumphs, by its
great riches, by its numbers, by its force, which clasps the world in
its great arms and subjugates it, and then stops, fatigued by its
conquest, and asks: "Why have I conquered?"

HUGO WOLF

The more one learns of the history of great artists, the more one is
struck by the immense amount of sadness their lives enclose. Not only
are they subjected to the trials and disappointments of ordinary
life--which affect them more cruelly through their greater
sensitiveness--but their surroundings are like a desert, because they
are twenty, thirty, fifty, or even hundreds of years in advance of their
contemporaries; and they are often condemned to d