But Freihild is full of an unaffected and almost
savage joy at her deliverance by Guntram's sword. Love for Guntram fills
her heart, and her one desire is to save him.
The third act takes place in the prison of the chateau; and it is a
surprising, uncertain, and very curious act. It is not a logical result
of the action that has preceded it. One feels a sudden commotion in the
poet's ideas, a crisis of feeling which disturbed him even as he wrote,
and a difficulty which he did not succeed in solving. The new light
towards which he was beginning to move appears very clearly. Strauss was
too advanced in the composition of his work to escape the neo-Christian
renouncement which had to finish the drama; he could only have avoided
that by completely remodelling his characters. So Guntram rejects
Freihild's love. He sees he has fallen, even as the others, under the
curse of sin. He had preached charity to others when he himself was full
of egoism; he had killed Robert rather to satisfy his instinctive and
animal jealousy than to deliver the people from a tyrant. So he
renounces his desires, and expiates the sin of being alive by retirement
from the world.
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