‘Nibelungenring’ in comfort at the theatre in their place of business, instead of facing the somewhat tiresome visit to Bayreuth, it is regarded as a sign of progress, since one no longer has to undertake a pilgrimage to something extraordinary, but the extraordinary is turned into the usual and brought to one’s own door.” [962W-{4/79} Shall We Hope?: PW Vol. VI, p. 117]
[963W-{4/79} Shall We Hope?: PW Vol. VI, p. 118-119]
[P. 118] {anti-FEUER/NIET} “But the theory of Constant Progress takes refuge in the ‘infinitely broader horizon’ of the modern world, as compared with the narrow field of vision of the old. (…) Our world … is irreligious. How should a Highest dwell in us, when we no longer are capable of honouring, of even recognising the Great? And if perchance we recognise it, we are taught by our barbarous civilisation to hate and persecute it, for it stands in the way of general progress. But the Highest – what should this world have to traffic with that? How can it be asked to venerate the sorrows of the Saviour? (…) … what ‘educated’ person gladly goes to church? – Before all, ‘Away with the Great!’
{anti-FEUER/NIET} If the Great is disliked in our so-called wider field of vision, the Small grows more and more unknowable … , since smaller day by day; as our constantly-progressive Science shows by splitting up the [P. 119] atoms till she can see nothing at all, which she imagines to be lighting on the Great; so that it is precisely she who feeds the silliest superstition, through the philosophisms in her train. If our Science, the idol of the modern world, could yield our State-machinery but so much healthy human reason as to find a means against the starving of fellow-citizens out of work, for example, we might end by taking her as good exchange for a church-religion sunk to impotence.” [963W-{4/79} Shall We Hope?: PW Vol. VI, p. 118-119]
[964W-{4/29/79}CD Vol. II, p. 299]
[P. 299] {FEUER} “Over coffee he [Wagner] said to me that in fact Siegfried ought to have turned into Parsifal and redeemed Wotan, he should have come upon Wotan (instead of Amfortas) in the course of his wanderings, but there was no antecedent for it, and so it would have to remain as it was.” [964W-{4/29/79}CD Vol. II, p. 299]
[965W-{5/17/79}CD Vol. II, p. 310]
[P. 310] {FEUER} “Afterward I recall that some days ago R. told me that Kundry was his most original female character; when he had realized that the servant of the Grail was the same woman who seduced Amfortas, he said, everything fell into place, and after that, however many years might elapse, he knew how it would turn out.” [965W-{5/17/79}CD Vol. II, p. 310]
[966W-{5/20/79}CD Vol. II, p. 311]
[P. 311] {FEUER} “At breakfast we talk about ‘Parsifal,’ and he feels I am not entirely wrong when I tell him that each of us bears within his soul a fellow feeling for the tragedy of Tristan and Isolde as well as of Parsifal – the power of love; each of us feels at one time the death wish within it. And the power of sin, of sensuality, I think, too, and its longing for salvation. Wotan’s experiences, on the other hand – his feelings toward Siegfried and Siegmund – people do not feel
