sly to realise himself, to find
the mode of best expressing the best that was in him. That mode he
found in "The Rheingold" and mastered in "The Valkyrie," with its
continuous development and transmogrification of themes. And (to
discard utterly my former metaphor) after steeping oneself for several
nights in that last great river of melody, wide and deep and clear, it
is interesting to be led suddenly to its source, and see it bubbling
up with infinite energy, a good deal of frothing, and some brown mud.

Compared with "The Valkyrie," "The Flying Dutchman" is ill-contrived
and stagy. It is flecked here and there with vulgarity. It has far
less of pure beauty; it has only its moments, whereas "The Valkyrie"
gives hours of unbroken delight. "The Valkyrie" appeals to the primary
instincts of our nature--instincts and desires that will remain in us
so long as our nature is human; while for a large part of its effect
the "Dutchman" trusts to a feeling which is elusive at all times and
has no permanent hold upon us. Horror of the supernatural is not very
deeply rooted in us, after all. Modern training tends to eliminate it
altogether. In later life Goethe could not call up a single delightful
shiver. There are probably not half a dozen stories in the world from
which we can get it a second time. The unexpected plays a part in
producing it, and the same means does not produce it twice with
anything approaching the same intensity. Hence the Dutchman's phantom
ship must be more ghost-like at each representation, its blood-red
sails a bloodier red; and in the long-run, do what the stage
carpenters will, we coldly sit and compare their work with previous
ships. True, the music which accompanies its entry is always
impressively ghastly; yet, while we know this, we are acutely
conscious that our feeling is more or less a laudable make-believe--a
make-believe that requires some little effort. Then Heine's notion,
which seemed so brilliant at first, that the Dutchman could be
redeemed by the unshakable love of a woman, has now all the
disagreeable staleness of a decrepit and obvious untruth. It has no
essential verity to give it validity, it is no symbol of a fact which
is immediately and deeply felt to be a fact. The condition of
redemption is entirely arbitrary: it might as reasonably be that the
Dutchman should find a woman who would not shrink from eating his
weather-stained hat. What was it to the Dutchman's damned soul if all