correspondence with the characteristics of our present state of things, as in truth deep-rooted in man’s sentient nature, which yearns from out an evil and dishonoured world-of-sense (Sinnlichkeit) towards a nobler reality that shall answer to his nature purified. Here Death is but the moment of despair; it is the act of demolition that we discharge upon ourselves, since – as solitary units – we can not discharge it on the evil order of the tyrant world. But the actual destruction of the outer, visible bonds of that honourless materialism, is the duty which devolves on us, as the healthy proclamation of a stress turned heretofore toward self-destruction.” [580W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 378-379]
[581W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 391]
[P. 391] [* Wagner’s Footnote: “I shall never write an Opera more. As I have no wish to invent an arbitrary title for my works, I will call them Dramas, since hereby will at least be clearest indicated the standpoint whence the thing I offer should be accepted.”] [581W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 391]
[582W-{11/20/51} Letter to Franz Liszt: SLRW, p. 238-239]
[P. 238] “But so that none may steal the gold, they themselves [the Rhinedaughters] are appointed its guardians: the man who approaches them has indeed no desire for the gold; Alberich, at least, does not seem to desire it, since he behaves like a man in [P. 239] love.” [582W-{11/20/51} Letter to Franz Liszt: SLRW, p. 238-239]
[583W-{1/12/52}Letter to Theodor Uhlig: SLRW, p. 246-247]
[P. 246] “I am often now beset by strange thoughts on ‘art’, and on the whole I cannot help finding that, if we had life, we should have no need of art. Art begins at precisely the point where life breaks off: where nothing more is present, we call out in art, ‘I wish’. I simply do not understand how a truly happy individual could ever hit upon the idea of producing ‘art’: only in life can we ‘achieve’ anything. – is our ‘art’ therefore not simply a confession of our impotence? – Indeed! Or such at least is our art, and all the art which springs from our present dissatisfaction with life. It is no more than ‘a desire expressed with the utmost clarity’! I should give up all my art if, by doing so, I could regain my youth, find health, [P. 247] nature, a woman who loved me unreservedly, and fine children! Take it! Give me the rest in return! – Ah, how ludicrous it would be if, with all our enthusiasm for art, what we were fighting over were simply thin air!” [583W-{1/12/52}Letter to Theodor Uhlig: SLRW, p. 246-247]
[584W-{1/30/52}Letter to Franz Liszt: SLRW, p. 248-249]
[P. 248] {FEUER} “Ortrud is a woman who – does not know love. This says it all – and a most terrible thing it is to say. Her nature is politics. A male politician disgusts us, a female politician appals us: it was this appallingness which I had to portray. There is one love which this woman feels, love of the past, of departed generations, the dreadfully insane love of ancestral pride which can express itself only as a hatred towards all that lives, all that really exists. In a man such love becomes ludicrous, but in a woman it is terrible, because women – given their powerful and natural need for love – must love something, and ancestral pride, a hankering after the past, thus becomes a
