working and endurance of everything uncommon and unordinary in this ordinary world. For, when we regard it with closer sympathy, each truly great mind-which the human generative-force, for all its teeming productivity, brings forth so vastly seldom-sets us a-wondering how twas possible for it to hold out for any length of time within this world, to wit for long enough to acquit itself of its tale of work.
Now, the great, the truly noble spirit is distinguished from the common organisation of everyday by this: to it every, often the seemingly most trivial, incident of life and world-intercourse is capable of swiftly displaying its widest correlation with the essential root-phenomena of all existence, thus of shewing Life and the World themselves in their true, their terribly earnest meaning. The naïve, ordinary man-accustomed merely to seize the outmost side of such events, the side of practical service for the moment's need-when once this awful earnestness suddenly reveals itself to him through an unaccustomed juncture, falls into such consternation that self-murder is very frequently the consequence. The great, the exceptional man finds himself each day, in a certain measure, in the situation where the ordinary man forthwith despairs of life. Certainly the great, the truly religious man I mean, is saved from this consequence by the lofty earnest of that inner ure-knowledge (Ur-erkenntniss) of the essence of the world which has become the standard of all his beholdings; at each instant he is prepared for the terrible phenomenon: also, he is armoured with a gentleness and patience which never let him fall a-storming against any manifestation of evil that may haply take him unawares.
Yet an irrecusable yearning to turn his back completely on this world must necessarily surge up within his breast, were there not for him-as for the common man who lives away a life of constant care-a certain distraction, a periodical turning-aside from that world's-earnestness which else is ever present to his thoughts. What for the common man is entertainment and amusement, must be forthcoming for him as well, but in the noble form befitting him; and that which renders possible this turning aside, this noble illusion, must again be a work of that man- redeeming Wahn which spreads its wonders wherever the individual's normal mode of view can help itself no farther. But in this instance the Wahn must be entirely candid; it must confess itself in advance for an illusion, if it is to be willingly embraced by the man who really longs for distraction and illusion in the high and earnest sense I mean. The fancy-picture brought before him must never afford a loophole for re-summoning the earnestness of Life through any possible dispute about its actuality and provable foundation upon fact, as religious Dogma does: no, it must exercise its specific virtue through its very setting of the conscious Wahn in place of the reality. This office is fulfilled by Art; and in conclusion I therefore point my highly-loved young friend to Art, as the kindly Life-saviour who does not really and wholly lead us out beyond this life, but, within it, lifts us up above it and shews it as itself a game of play; a game that, take it ne'er so terrible and earnest an appearance, yet here again is shewn us as a mere Wahn-picture, as which it comforts us and wafts us from the common truth of our distress (Noth). '1 he work of noblest Art will be given a glad admittance by my friend, the work that, treading on the footprints of Life's earnestness, shall soothingly dissolve reality into that Wahn wherein itself in turn, this serious reality, at last seems nothing else to us but Wahn: and in his most rapt beholding of this wondrous Wahn-play (Wahnspiel) there will return to him the indicible dream-picture of the holiest revelation, of meaning ure-akin (urverwandt sinnvoll), with clearness unmistakable,-that same divine dream-picture which the disputes of sects and churches had made ever more incognisable to him, and which, as wellnigh unintelligible Dogma, could only end in his dismay. The nothingness of the world, here is it harmless, frank, avowed as though in smiling: for our willing purpose to deceive ourselves has led us on to recognise the world's real state without a shadow of illusion.-
Thus has it been possible for me, even from this earnest sally into the weightiest regions of Life's earnestness, and without losing myself or feigning, to come back to my beloved Art. Will my friend in sympathy understand me, when I confess that first upon this path have I regained full consciousness of Art's serenity?
(1) See Volume vii., 'Zukunftsmusik.'-Richard Wagner.-Volume III. of the present series. -Tr.
(2) 'Gewiss war es aber für meine Untersuchung charakteristisch, dass ich hierbei nie auf das Gebiet der eigentlichen Politik herabstieg, namentlich die Zeitpolitik, wie sie mich trotz der Heftigkeit der Zustände nicht wahrhaft berührte, auch von mir gänzlich unberührt blieb.' In confirmation of this statement, which has been disputed by Wagner's enemies and by one so-called 'friend,' the late Ferdinand Praeger, I may refer to the facts collected in my little brochure '1849: A Vindication,' published in 1892 by Messrs Kegan Paul & Co.-Tr.
(3) 'Nicht eher nahmen daher die politischen Bewegungen jener Zeit meine Aufmerksamkeit ernster in Anspruch, als his durch den Übertritt derselben auf das rein soziale Gebiet in mir Ideen angeregt wurden, die, weil sie meiner idealen Forderung Nabrung zu geben schienen, mich, wie ich gestehe, eine Zeit lang ernstlich erfüllten. Meine Richtung ging darauf, mir eine Organisation des gemeinsamen öffentlichen, wie des hauslichen Lebens vorzustellen, welche von selbst zu einer schonen Gestaltung des menschlichen Geschlechtes führen müsste. Die Berechnungen der neueren Sozialisten fesselten demnach meine Theilnahme von da ab, wo sie in Systeme auszugehen schienen, welche zunächst nichts Anderes als den widerlichen Anblick einer Organisation der Gesellschaft zu gleichmässig vertheilter Arbeit hervorbrachten.' As I have been compelled to slightly paraphrase the first of these sentences, and as there are minor difficulties in the other two, I give all three in the original.-Tr.
(4) Cf. Vol. I., 30-31.-Tr.
(5) Cf. Vol. I., 58.-Tr.
(6) Cf. Letters to Uhlig, pp. 81-82, written October 22nd, 1850.-Tr.
(7) Cf. Vol I., 24, and Vol II., 178.-Tr.
(8) 'Zu schauen kam ich, nicht zu schaffen '-Wotan in Siegfried, act ii. -Tr.
(9) Cf. Vol. II., 186-187.-Tr.
(10) 'Wahn-Vermögen.' As the word 'Wahn' is frequently used in these pages, and is absolutely untranslatable, I shall mostly retain it as it stands. It does not so much mean an 'illusion' or 'delusion,' in general, as a 'semi-conscious feigning' (such as the 'legal fiction'), a 'dream,' or a 'symbolical aspiration '-its etymological kinship being quite as near to 'fain' as to 'feign'; but the context will leave the reader in no doubt as to its particular application in any sentence. It will be remembered that 'Wahn' plays an important part in Hans Sachs' monologue in Die Meistersinger, act iii; the poem of that drama, containing the Wahn-monologue in a somewhat more extended form than its ultimate version, had already been published in 1862.-Tr.
(11) Arthur Schopenhauer, in 'Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,' vol. ii, cap. 27. The philosopher there compares the operations of this 'animal instinct' with a case of what we now should call hypnotism, and says that 'insects are, in a certain sense, natural somnambulists . . . They have the feeling that they must perform a certain action, without exactly knowing why.' He also compares this 'instinct' to the 'daimonion' of Socrates, but does not absolutely employ the expression 'Wahn' in this connection. Neither does the 'spirit of the race' (or 'species'), mentioned by Wagner a few sentences farther on, occur in so many words with Schopenhauer. Nowadays for 'the spirit of the race' some of us might be inclined to read 'the principle of the survival of the fittest'; but the explanation of its mode of action, through a 'Wahn,' would hold as good to-day as thirty years ago.-Tr.
(12) 'Von einem allgemeinen Rechtszustande,'-literally, 'of a general (or universal) state of right (or law) ;' the expression seems to refer to the so-called 'Balance of power,' and may also be paraphrased by the more modern European concert.'-Tr.
(13) 'Das plastische Gedächtniss '-evidently the mental record of things in their visual, concrete form, as opposed to their abstract labels. -Tr.
(14) Cf. Amfortas; at this epoch our author was drafting his Parsifal. -Tr.
(15) Cf. Vol II., 178, 179. Upon coupling the present parallelism with that noted on page 11 antea, it would appear highly probable that King Ludwig had been studying Part II. of Oper und Drama, and had directed Wagner's attention to this section-surrounding the Œdipus-Antigone myth-in particular.-TR.
(16) 'So weit die intellektualen Vorstellungfäshigkeiten des menschlichen Verstandes reichen, und in ihrer praktischen Anwendung als Vernunft sich geltend machen, ist durchaus keine Vorstellung zu gewinnen, welche nicht genau immer nur wieder diese selbe Welt des Bedürfnisses und des Wechsels erkennen liesse: da diese der Quell unserer Unseligkeit ist, muss daher jene andere Welt der Erlösung von dieser Welt genau so verschieden sein, als diejenige Erkenntnissart, durch welche wir sie erkennen sollen, verschieden von derjenigen sein muss, welcher einzig diese täuschende leidenvolle Welt sich darstellt.'
(17) 'Diese wunderwirkende Vorstellung, die wir, der gemeinen praktischen Vorstellungsweise gegenuber, nur als Wahn auffassen können' etc. I here have translated the first 'Vorstellung' as 'intuition,' though 'idea' is the word generally employed for rendering the Schopenhauerian term; literally it signifies an image 'set before the
