[570W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 343]
[P. 343] {FEUER} “ In effect, this ‘Lohengrin’ is an entirely new phonemenon to themodern mind … .” [570W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 343]
[571W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 344]
[P. 344] {anti-FEUER} “Here I touch the tragic feature in the situation of the true Artist towards the life of the Present, that very situation to which I gave artistic effect in the Lohengrin story. – The most natural and urgent longing of such an artist is, to be taken up without reserve into the Feeling and by it understood; and the impossibility – under the modern conditions of our art-life – of meeting with this Feeling in such a state of freedom and undoubting sureness as he needs for being fully understood, -- the compulsion to address himself almost solely to the critical Understanding, instead of to the Feeling: this it is, that forms the tragic element in his situation; this it is, that, as an artist made of flesh and blood, I could not help but feel, and this, that, on the pathway of my further evolution, was to be forced so on my consciousness that I broke at last into open revolt against the burden of that situation.” [571W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 344]
[572W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 345-346]
[P. 345] “It was clear to my inner sense, that an essential ground of misunder-standing of the tragical significance of my hero had lain in the assumption that Lohengrin, having descended from a glittering realm of painlessly-unearned and cold magnificence, and in obedience to an unnatural law that bound him willessly thereto, now turned his back upon the strife of earthly passions, to taste again the pleasures of divinity. As the chief lesson that this taught me, was the wilfulness of the modern critical mode of viewing things, which looks away from the instinctive aspect and twists them round to suit its purpose; and as it was easy for me to see that this misunderstanding had simply sprung from a wilful interpretation of that binding law, which in truth was no outwardly-imposed decree, but the expression of the necessary inner nature of one who, from the midst of lonely splendour, is athirst for being understood through Love: so, to ensure the desired correct impression, I held all the faster to the original outlines of the legend, whose naïve innocence had made so irresistible an impression upon myself. In order to artistically convey these outlines in entire accordance with the effect that they had made on me, I observed a still greater fidelity than in the case of ‘Tannhaeuser,’ in my presentment of those half-historical, half-legendary features by which alone a subject so out of the beaten path could be brought with due conviction to the answering senses. This led me, in the conduct of the scenes (scenische Haltung) and dialogue (sprachlichen Ausdruck), to a path which brought me later to the discovery of possibilities whose logical sequence was certainly to point me out an utter revolution in the adjustment of those factors which have hitherto made up our [P. 346] operatic mode of speech.” [572W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 345-346]
[573W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 346-348]
[P. 346] {FEUER} “It was midst this struggle for clearness of exposition, as I remember, that the essence of the heart of Woman, such as I had to picture in the loving Elsa, first dawned upon me
