* * * * *
Wagner left _Siegfried_ asleep in the forest in order to embark on the
funereal vessel of _Tristan und Isolde_. But he left Siegfried with some
anguish of heart. When writing to Liszt in 1857, he says:
"I have taken young Siegfried into the depths of a lonely forest;
there I have left him under a lime-tree, and said good-bye to him
with tears in my eyes. It has torn my heart to bury him alive, and
I had a hard and painful fight with myself before I could do it....
Shall I ever go back to him? No, it is all finished. Don't let us
speak of it again."
Wagner had reason to be sad. He knew well that he would never find his
young Siegfried again. He roused him up ten years later. But all was
changed. That splendid third act has not the freshness of the first two.
Wotan has become an important figure, and brought reason and pessimism
with him into the drama. Wagner's later conceptions were perhaps
loftier, and his genius was more master of itself (think of the classic
dignity in the awakening of Bruennhilde); but the ardour and happy
expression of youth is gone.
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