annot 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. Wagner
himself knew it well. His letters show the despair of a soul wrestling
with its familiar spirit, which it clutches and holds, only to lose
again. And we seem to hear cries of pain, and feel his anger and
despair.

"I can never tell you what a really wretched musician I am. In my
inmost heart I know I am a bungler and an absolute failure. You
should see me when I say to myself, 'It ought to go now,' and sit
down to the piano and put together some miserable rubbish, which I
fling away again like an idiot. I know quite well the kind of
musical trash I produce.... Believe me, it is no good expecting me
to do anything decent. Sometimes I really think it was Reissiger
who inspired me to write _Tannhaeuser_ and _Lohengrin_."

This is how Wagner wrote to Liszt when he was finishing this amazing
work of art. In the same way Michelangelo wrote to his father in 1509:
"I am in agony. I have not dared to ask the Pope for anything, because
my work does not make sufficient progress to merit any remuneration. The
work is too difficult, and indeed it is not my profession. I am wasting
my time to no purpose. Heaven help me!" For a year he had been working
at the ceiling of the Sixtine chapel.

This is something more than a burst of modesty. No one had more pride
than Michelangelo or Wagner; but both felt the defects of their work
like a sharp wound. And although those defects do not prevent their
works from being the glory of the human spirit, they are there just the
same.

I do not want to dwell upon the inherent imperfections of Wagner's
dramas; they are really dramatic or epic symphonies, impossible to act,
and gaining nothing from representation. This is especially true of
_Tristan_, where the disparity between the storm of sentiment depicted,
and the cold convention and enforced timidity of action on the stage, is
such that at certain moments--in the second act, for example--it pains
and shocks one, and see