[675W-{5/2/60}Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: RWLMW, p. 226-227]
[P. 226] {FEUER} “Probably it is more indifferent to the World-spirit, whether a few extra new works of this kind shall be bestowed on the world, than that the essence of this kind of work should be disclosed to the world wholly intelligibly. Oh, it is [P. 227] obvious: with the essence of a thing one never reckons quantity; that’s inessential, but the main affair is the inner capacity of the entire kind. If I completely disclose this, I thereby fire the consciousness of other units, who will then be able to multiply the spark. Thus may we also account for the uncommon individuality and multiplicity of the Italian school of painting, the Spanish school of poetry, and so on. Consequently (I believe I am safe in assuming) it is of the greater moment to the World-spirit that I should disclose my finished works to the world through perfect performances; and on the widest possible terrain, since the few on whom the spark can fall to use are very rare, very dispersed alike in time and space. With new works, on the other hand, in a certain very deep sense – intelligible to the World-spirit alone – I now can but repeat myself, no other essentiality can I reveal any more.” [675W-{5/2/60}Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: RWLMW, p. 226-227]
[676W-{8/60} Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: SLRW, p. 499]
[P. 499] {FEUER} Lohengrin affected me very deeply yesterday, and I cannot help thinking it the most tragic of all poems, since reconciliation is really to be found only if one casts a terribly wide-ranging glance at the world.
{FEUER} Only a profound acceptance of the doctrine of metempsychosis has been able to console me by revealing the point at which all things finally converge at the same level of redemption, after the various individual existences – which run alongside each other in time – have come together in a meaningful way outside time. According to the beautiful Buddhist doctrine, the spotless purity of Lohengrin is easily explicable in terms of his being the continuation of Parzival – who was the first to strive towards purity. Elsa, similarly, would reach the level of Lohengrin through being reborn. Thus my plan for the ‘Victors’ struck me as being the concluding section of Lohengrin. Here ‘Savitri’ (Elsa) entirely reaches the level of ‘Ananda’. In this way, all the terrible Tragedy of life would be attributable to our dislocation in time and space: but since time and space are merely our way of perceiving things, but otherwise have no reality, even the greatest tragic pain must be explicable to those who are truly clear-sighted as no more than an individual error: I believe it is so! And, in all truth, it is a question simply of what is pure and noble, something which, in itself, is painless. –
{FEUER} (…) Time and space – which, after all, bring nothing but torment and distress – then disappear for me!” [676W-{8/60} Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: SLRW, p. 499]
[677W-{8/60} Letter to Mathilde Wesendonck: SLRW, p. 500-501]
[P. 500] {FEUER} “Did I not tell you once before that the fabulously wild messenger of the Grail is to be one and the same person as the enchantress of the second act. Since this dawned on me, almost everything else about the subject has become clear to me. This strangely horrifying creature who, slave-like, serves the Knights of the Grail with untiring eagerness, who carries out the most unheard-of tasks, and who lies in a corner waiting only until such time as she is given some unusual task to perform – and who at times disappears completely, no one knows how or where?
