physically and palpably suggested to it, can never understand the poet’s attitude towards the world of his own experience. [667W-{1/19/59}Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: SLRW, p. 441-442]
[668W-{4/26/59}Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: RWLMW, p. 125-126]
[P. 125] {FEUER} “There’s no help for it; one must be able to avow all to oneself, the whole misery of the world and existence, fully and entirely to gain the power to taste the only thing that lifts above it.That is my whole philosophy, in face of those … [P. 126] who labour to make Life endurable by declining to admit its badness, or wilfully shutting their eyes to it.” [668W-{4/26/59}Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: RWLMW, p. 125-126]
[669W-{5/30/59}Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: SLRW, p. 456-458]
[P. 456] “This last act is now a [P. 457] real intermittent fever: -- the deepest and most unprecedented suffering and yearning, and immediately afterwards, the most unprecedented triumph and jubilation. {FEUER} God knows, no one has ever taken the matter so seriously before, and Semper is right. It is this thought that has most recently turned me against Parzival again. You see, it has again dawned upon me of late that this would again be a fundamentally evil task. Looked at closely, it is Anfortas who is the centre of attention and principal subject. Of course, it is not at all a bad story. Consider, in heaven’s name, all that goes on there! It suddenly became dreadfully clear to me: it is my third-act Tristan inconceivably intensified. With the spear-wound and perhaps another wound, too, -- in his heart --, the wretched man knows of no other longing in his terrible pain than the longing to die; in order to attain this supreme solace, he demands repeatedly to be allowed a glimpse of the Grail in the hope that it might at least close his wounds, for everything else is useless, nothing – nothing can help him: but the Grail can give him but one thing only, which is precisely that he cannot die; its very sight increases his torments by conferring immortality upon them. (…) Would he, in the madness of his despair, wish to turn away for ever from the Grail and close his eyes to it? He would fain do so in order to die. But – he himself was appointed guardian of the Grail; and it was no blind, superficial power which appointed him, -- no! it was because he was so worthy, because there was no one who knew the Grail’s miraculous nature as profoundly and as intimately as he knew it, just as his whole soul now yearns, again and [P. 458] again, to behold the vision that destroys him in the very act of worship, vouchsafing heavenly salvation and eternal damnation!” [669W-{5/30/59}Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: SLRW, p. 456-458]
[670W-{5/30/59}Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: SLRW, p. 458-459]
[P. 458] “ … it is sufficient to have given new life to such a subject on the basis of the genuine features of the legend, as I have now done with this Grail legend, and then to take a quick look at how such a poet as Wolfram has depicted the very same thing … in order to be utterly repelled by the poet’s incompetence. (The same thing happened to me with Gottfried v. Strassburg in the context of Tristan). (…) [P. 459] I would have to make a completely fresh start with Parzival! For Wolfram hadn’t the first idea of what he was doing … .” [670W-{5/30/59}Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: SLRW, p. 458-459]
