But it is more striking in Strauss, because he is
more heroic. And so we get all this display of superhuman will, and the
end is only "My desire is gone!"
In this lies the undying worm of German thought--I am speaking of the
thought of the choice few who enlighten the present and anticipate the
future. I see an heroic people, intoxicated by its triumphs, by its
great riches, by its numbers, by its force, which clasps the world in
its great arms and subjugates it, and then stops, fatigued by its
conquest, and asks: "Why have I conquered?"
HUGO WOLF
The more one learns of the history of great artists, the more one is
struck by the immense amount of sadness their lives enclose. Not only
are they subjected to the trials and disappointments of ordinary
life--which affect them more cruelly through their greater
sensitiveness--but their surroundings are like a desert, because they
are twenty, thirty, fifty, or even hundreds of years in advance of their
contemporaries; and they are often condemned to despairing efforts, not
to conquer the world, but to live.
These highly-strung natures are rarely able to keep up this incessant
struggle for very long; and the finest genius may have to reckon with
illness and misery and even premature death.
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