The effort necessary for
the creation of them was too great to be long sustained; for a single
work might means years of toil. And the tense emotions of a whole drama
cannot be expressed by a series of sudden inspirations put into form the
moment they are conceived. Long and arduous labour is necessary. These
giants, fashioned like Michelangelo's, these concentrated tempests of
heroic force and decadent complexity, are not arrested, like the work of
a sculptor or painter, in one moment of their action; they live and go
on living in endless detail of sensation. To expect sustained
inspiration is to expect what is not human. Genius may reveal what is
divine; it may call up and catch a glimpse of _die Muetter_, but it
cannot always breathe in the exhausted air of this world. So will must
sometimes take the place of inspiration; though the will is uncertain
and often stumbles in its task. That is why we encounter things that jar
and jolt in the greatest works--they are the marks of human weakness.
Well, perhaps there is less weakness in _Tristan_ than in Wagner's
other dramas--_Goetterdaemmerung_, for instance--for nowhere else is the
effort of his genius more strenuous or its flight more dizzy.
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