People tell me that it would
then have been less true to life. But why should it be truthful to
depict life only as a bad thing? Life is neither good nor bad it is just
what we make it, and the result of the way in which we look at it. Joy
is as real as sorrow, and a very fertile source of action. What
inspiration there is in the laugh of a great man! Let us welcome,
therefore, the sparkling if transient gaiety of _Siegfried_.
Wagner wrote to Malwida von Meysenbug: "I have, by chance, just been
reading Plutarch's life of Timoleon. That life ended very happily--a
rare and unheard-of thing, especially in history. It does one good to
think that such a thing is possible. It moved me profoundly."
I feel the same when I hear _Siegfried_. We are rarely allowed to
contemplate happiness in great tragic art; but when we may, how splendid
it is, and how good for one!
"TRISTAN"
Tristan towers like a mountain above all other love poems, as Wagner
above all other artists of his century. It is the outcome of a sublime
conception, though the work as a whole is far from perfect. Of perfect
works there is none where Wagner is concerned.
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