His restlessness seems to come from Schumann, his
religious feeling from Mendelssohn, his voluptuousness from Gounod or
the Italian masters, his passion from Wagner.[181] But his will is
heroic, dominating, eager, and powerful to a sublime degree. And that is
why Richard Strauss is noble and, at present, quite unique. One feels in
him a force that has dominion over men.
[Footnote 181: In _Guntram_ one could even believe that he had made up
his mind to use a phrase in _Tristan_, as if he could not find anything
better to express passionate desire.]
* * * * *
It is through this heroic side that he may be considered as an inheritor
of some of Beethoven's and Wagner's thought. It is this heroic side
which makes him a poet--one of the greatest perhaps in modern Germany,
who sees herself reflected in him and in his hero. Let us consider this
hero.
He is an idealist with unbounded faith in the power of the mind and the
liberating virtue of art. This idealism is at first religious, as in
_Tod und Verklaerung_, and tender and compassionate as a woman, and full
of youthful illusions, as in _Guntram_.
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