"[50]
[Footnote 48: _Memoires_, II, 415.]
[Footnote 49: "Yes, it is to that escape from the world that _Parsifal_
owes its birth and growth. What man can, during a whole lifetime, gaze
into the depths of this world with a calm reason and a cheerful heart?
When he sees murder and rapine organised and legalised by a system of
lies, impostures, and hypocrisy, will he not avert his eyes and shudder
with disgust?" (Wagner, _Representations of the Sacred Drama of Parsifal
at Bayreuth, in 1882_.)]
[Footnote 50: The scene was described to me by his friend, Malwida von
Meysenbug, the calm and fearless author of _Memoires d'une Idealiste_.]
Poor beings! Conquerors of the world, conquered and broken!
But of the two deaths, how much sadder is that of the artist who was
without a faith, and who had neither strength nor stoicism enough to be
happy without one; who slowly died in that little room in the rue de
Calais amid the distracting noise of an indifferent and even hostile
Paris;[51] who shut himself up in savage silence; who saw no loved face
bending over him in his last moments; who had not the comfort of belief
in his work;[52] who could not think calmly of what he had done, nor
look proudly back over the road he had trodden, nor rest content in the
thought of a life well lived; and who began and closed his _Memoires_
with Shakespeare's gloomy words, and repeated them when dying:--
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
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