[568W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 341]
[P. 341] {FEUER} “He [Lohengrin] sought the woman who would not call for explanations or defence, but who should love him with an unconditional love. Therefore must he cloak his higher nature, for only in the non-revealing of this higher (hoeheren) – or more correctly, heightened (erhoehten) – essence, could there lie the surety that he was not adored because of it alone, or humbly worshipped as a being past all understanding – Whereas his longing was not for worship nor for adoration, but for the only thing sufficient to redeem him from his loneliness, to still his deep desire, -- for Love, for being Loved, for being understood through Love. With the highest powers of his senses, with his fullest fill of consciousness, he would fain become and be none other than a warmly-feeling, warmth-inspiring Man; in a word, a Man and not a God – i.e. no ‘absolute’ Artist. Thus yearned he for Woman, -- for the human Heart. And thus did he step down from out his loneliness of sterile bliss, when he heard this woman’s cry for succour, this heart-cry from humanity below. But there clings to him the tell-tale halo of his ‘heightened’ nature; he can no appear as aught but suprahuman; the gaping of the common herd, the poisoned trail of envy, throw their shadows even across the loving maiden’s heart: doubt and jealousy convince him that he has not been understood, but only worshipped, and force from him the avowal of his divinity, wherewith, undone, he returns to his loneliness.” [568W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 341]
[569W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 341-342]
[P. 341] “It seemed then to me, and still it seems, most hard to comprehend, how the deep tragedy of this subject and this character should have stayed unfelt; and how the story should have been so misunderstood that Lohengrin was looked on as a cold, forbidding figure, more prone to arouse dislike than sympathy. This reproach was first made [P. 342] to me by an intimate friend, whose knowledge and whose intellectual gifts I highly prize. In his case, however, I reaped an experience which has since been verified by repetition: namely, that upon the first direct acquaintance with my poem the impression produced is thoroughly affecting, and that this reproach only enters when the impression of the artwork itself has faded, and given place to cold, reflective criticism. Thus this reproach was not an instinctive act of the immediate-feeling heart, but a purposed act of mediate reflection. In this occurrence I therefore found the tragedy of Lohengrin’s character and situation confirmed, as one deep-rooted in our modern life: it was reproduced upon the artwork and its author, just in the same way as it had borne down upon the hero of the poem. The character and situation of this Lohengrin I now recognise, with clearest sureness, as the type of the only absolute tragedy, in fine, of the tragic element of modern life; and that of just as great significance for the Present, as was the ‘Antigone’ – though in another relation – for the life of the Hellenic State. [* Wagner’s Footnote: Exactly as my critic, may the Athenian Citizen have felt, who under the immediate influence of the artwork was seized with unquestioning sympathy for Antigone, yet in the Areopagus, upon the following day, would certainly have voted to death the living heroine.] From out this sternest tragic moment of the Present one path alone can lead: the full reunion of sense and soul, the only genuinely gladsome element of the Future’s Life and Art, each in its utmost consummation.” [569W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 341-342]
