recognize as the most genuine and profound way of looking at things, which is why I have taken such a great liking to Schopenhauer in particular, because he has instructed me on these matters to my total satisfaction (?).
[P. 339] {FEUER} {SCHOP} It is at moments such as these that I see the ‘veil of Maya’ completely lifted, and what my eyes then see is terrible, so dreadful that – as I say – I suddenly ask myself whether I can go on living; but it is at this moment that another veil descends, a veil which – however dissimilar it may appear – is ultimately always the same ‘veil of Maya’, in all its artistic forms, which casts me back into the world of self-deception where – gladly (because necessarily), I freely admit, -- I then allow myself to become entangled, often to the point of utter distraction.” [630W-{5/12/55} Letter to Jacob Sulzer: SLRW, p. 338-339]
[631W-{3-6/55?} ML, p. 520-521]
[P. 520] “… I tried to express myself to him [Hector Berlioz] on the mystery of ‘artistic [P. 521] conception’. I sought by this term to designate the strength of the impressions life makes on our inner self, which hold us captive in their way until we disburden ourselves of them by the unique development of forms out of the innermost soul, which those external impressions have by no means summoned up but merely stirred from their deep slumber, so that the artistic form takes shape not as the effect of the impressions received from life but rather as a liberation from them.” [631W-{3-6/55?} ML, p. 520-521]
[632W-{6/7/55}Letter to Franz Liszt: SLRW, p. 343]
[P. 343] {FEUER} “In the Ninth Symphony (as a work of art), it is the last movement with its chorus which is without doubt the weakest section, it is important only from the point of view of the history of art since it reveals to us, in its very naïve way, the embarrassment felt by a real tone-poet who (after Hell and Purgatory) does not know how finally to represent Paradise. And indeed, my dearest Franz, there is a considerable difficulty with this ‘Paradise’, and if there is anyone who can confirm this for us, it is – remarkably enough – Dante himself, the singer of a Paradiso which I have no doubt is similarly the weakest part of his Divine Comedy. I have followed Dante through Hell and Purgatory with the deepest fellow-feeling; having emerged from the pit of hell, I washed myself with fervent emotion, together with the poet, at the foot of Mount Purgatory – in the waters of the sea, I then savoured the divine morn, the pure air, rose up from one cornice to the next, mortified one passion after another, struggled to subdue my wild instinct for survival, until I finally stood before the flames, abandoned my final wish to live and threw myself into the fiery glow in order that, sinking into rapt contemplation of Beatrice, I might cast aside my entire personality, devoid of will. But that I was roused once more from this ultimate self-liberation in order, basically, to revert to being what I had been before, simply in order that, on the basis of the most laboured sophisms unworthy of a great mind, and of what I can call only the most infantile inventions, the Catholic doctrine of a God who, for his own self-glorification, has created the existential hell that I have had to suffer should be confirmed in this highly problematical and, for my own part, utterly unacceptable way – this has left me feeling very unsatisfied.” [632W-{6/7/55}Letter to Franz Liszt: SLRW, p. 343]
