[643W-{8/23/56}Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 358]
[P. 358] {FEUER} “… I … recall once having sought forcibly to assert my [conceptual, as opposed to intuitive] meaning – the only time I ever did so – in the tendentious closing words which Bruennhilde addresses to those around her, a speech in which she turns their attention away from the reprehensibility of ownership to the love which alone brings happiness; and yet I had (unfortunately!) never really sorted out in my own mind what I meant by this ‘love’ which, in the course of the myth, we saw appearing as something utterly and completely devastating. What blinded me in the case of this one particular passage was the interference of my conceptual meaning. Strange to relate, this particular passage continued to torment me, and it required a complete revolution in my rational outlook, such as was finally brought about by Schopenhauer, to reveal to me the cause of my difficulty and provide me with a truly fitting key-stone for my poem which consists in an honest recognition of the true and profound nature of things, without the need to be in any way tendentious. (…) I myself recognize all too well that such a conviction could never have been forced upon me if it had not already corresponded to my own deepest intuitions … .” [643W-{8/23/56}Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 358]
[644W-{8/23/56}Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 359]
[P. 359] {FEUER} {SCHOP} “I am only an artist: -- that is my blessing and my curse; otherwise I should gladly become a saint … .” [644W-{8/23/56}Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 359]
[645W-{8/23/56}Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 359]
[P. 359] “ … in addition to the Nibelung dramas, I have in my head a Tristan and Isolde (love as fearful torment) and my latest subject ‘The Victors’ (supreme redemption, Buddhist legend), both of which are clamouring for attention, so that it requires great obstinacy on my part to suppress them in favour of the Nibelungs.”[645W-{8/23/56}Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 359]
[646W-{12/6/56}Letter to Franz Liszt, SLRW, p. 361]
[P. 361] “{FEUER} “During the next few days I shall finish the first scene [of Siegfried].It isstrange, but only in the course of composing the music does the essential meaning of my poem dawn upon me; secrets are continually being revealed to me which had previously been hidden from me. In this way everything becomes much more passionate and more urgent.” [646W {12/6/56}Letter to Franz Liszt, SLRW, p. 361]
[647W-{12/19/56 (?)} ML: p. 549]
[P. 549] “I would certainly be doing myself an injustice if I were to say that this external motive was the sole reason for my deciding to carry Tristan out; yet I must admit that a palpable change had taken place with respect to the mood in which I had set forth upon the other, vaster work several years before.” [647W-{12/19/56 (?)} ML: p. 549]
