Significant Moments: Part 15

. . . for an engagement at the Opera.
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo.
Wagner was in his postprandial mood . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . cheerful again, bubbling over with wit . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Sunday, January 7, 1883).
. . . passing from one individual or group to another with a rough-and-ready joke on his lips.
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
—A theory about the stars amuses him: if the light we see from stars is now several thousand years old, he says, then they must be seeing us as we were at the time of Abraham!
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday, June 28, 1881).
Oh, what a . . .
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
. . . curious scientific phenomenon . . .
Tom Stoppard, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
An astounding phenomenon, indeed!
Govert Schuller, Krishnamurti and the Search for Light.
(Is this true, or . . .
Arrigo Boito, Falstaff.
. . . a celestial . . .
Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages.
. . . jest?)
Arrigo Boito, Falstaff.
When Levi . . .
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews and Other Germans.
. . . tells us that his father is a Rabbi,
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Monday, January 13, 1879).
. . . an influential Rabbi . . .
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda.
. . . our conversation comes back to the Israelites—the feeling that they intervened too early in our cultural condition, that the human qualities the German character might have developed from within itself and then passed on to the Jewish character have been stunted by their premature interference in our affairs, before we have become fully aware of ourselves . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Monday, January 13, 1879).
"Nonsense," says the Professor, who has entered and is tossing off his things in the cloak-room. He says no more; opens the glass door and without a glance at the guests turns swiftly to the stairs. Takes them two at a time, crosses the upper hall and the small room leading into . . .
Thomas Mann, Disorder and Early Sorrow.
"Oh dear, . . .
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . Cosima crowed . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . perhaps he's terribly ill and we're tormenting him."
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
Cosima by now regarded Nietzsche with mixed feelings.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
I have to tell you: The most amazing thing's occurred . . .
Arrigo Boito, Falstaff.
I was astonished to . . .
Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad.
. . . learn this evening . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, May 11, 1871).
(reaching into her pocket and taking out a letter)
Arrigo Boito, Falstaff.
. . . that Prof. Nietzsche has now dedicated his . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, May 11, 1871).
. . . lecture on . . .
Jack London, The Taste of The Meat.
. . . Homer, which he once dedicated to me, to his sister . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, May 11, 1871).
What?
Arrigo Boito, Falstaff.
. . . and with the same poem.
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, May 11, 1871).
But wait—there’s more.
Mike D’Angelo, Review of O Brother, Where Art Thou?
. . . the paper, the ink, the form and shape, were the same.
William Faulkner, Light In August (Chapter 12).
Could that be true? It stretches credulity.
Jeffrey Birnbaum, Al Gore’s Clinton Moment.
"Shameful!"—
Homer, The Odyssey.
I had to laugh at first, but then . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, May 11, 1871).
. . . I now . . .
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw.
. . . see it as a dubious streak, an addiction to treachery . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, May 11, 1871).
You're joking!
Arrigo Boito, Falstaff.
. . . what a fop he is . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Sunday, February 4, 1883).
Listen.
Homer, The Odyssey.
He has written a letter . . .
Arrigo Boito, Falstaff.
. . . with an identical dedicatory poem . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . a little manuscript poem to . . .
Charles Dickens, Going into Society.
. . . as many people as possible . . .
Claude Lanzmann, Shoah.
What a contrivance!
Arrigo Boito, Falstaff.
So I told our story . . .
Homer, The Odyssey.
. . . to Wagner . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . and in reply he burst out: 'Intolerable . . .'
Homer, The Odyssey.
"That bad person . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Friday, August 2, 1878).
. . . Nietzsche! . . .
Cosima Wagner, Letter to Richard Strauss.
. . . an enemy to me inveterate . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . has taken everything from me, even the weapons . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Friday, August 2, 1878).
. . . that he . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . counts as his plunder . . .
Richard Wagner, Parsifal.
. . . and with . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . which he now attacks me. How sad that he should be so perverse—so clever, yet at the same
time so shallow!"
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Friday, August 2, 1878).
Wagner remarked to Cosima that Nietzsche had no ideas of his own . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . and that he (Wagner) . . .
An Open Letter from Glenda Miskin.
. . . is only now beginning to understand certain . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Saturday, March 25, 1882).
. . . sober realities of . . .
Niki Scevak, The Lost Tribe.
. . . Shakespeare’s Tempest—
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . such as . . .
George Steiner, Errata: An Examined Life.
. . . Caliban’s cry, . . .
M. Wintner, The Art and Power of Language: Storytelling, Translating, Transforming.
"You taught me language, and my profit on't is, I know how to curse."
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses quoting William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
I must say, . . .
Jack London, The People of the Abyss.
. . . his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, where he points so clearly to the distinction between music and the other fine arts, found me in complete accord.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . but the next book . . .
Richard Harding Davis, The Man Who Could Not Lose.
What was its name?
Frances Hodgson Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy.
All Too Human
George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human: A Political Education.
Repulsive.
Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out.
“Useless!”
Jules Verne, Around the World in 80 Days.
. . . even more useless than knowledge of the chemical composition of water is to a sailor in danger of shipwreck.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human.
Everyone was silent for a minute.
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
The Professor takes in only the general scene.
Thomas Mann, Disorder and Early Sorrow.
Miss Lou von Salome . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
. . . Lou, as she was called . . .
E. J. Lieberman, Acts of Will.
. . . swept up to him, flounced her short satin train—like a fish waving its fin—and vanished in the crowd.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
The room looked at him like an alien countenance composed into a polite grimace; . . .
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.
. . . his gaze seemed directed far away towards unexplored regions of the human soul.
Lou Andreas-Salome, Friedrich Nietzsche in Seinen Werken.
Where was I? I recognized nothing; I scarcely recognized Wagner.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
"Queer," thinks the Professor. "You would think a man would be one thing or the other— . . . . It's a psychological contradiction."
Thomas Mann, Disorder and Early Sorrow.
. . . the highest achievements of beauty . . . on the one hand . . .
George Steiner, The Great Composers: Wagner.
I, too, do not underestimate it; it has its peculiar magic.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
. . . and the awfulness on the other?
George Steiner, The Great Composers: Wagner.
Without a doubt!
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
Be that as it may—
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
'Tis hard to reconcile . . .
William Shakespeare, Macbeth.
. . . the circus of . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
. . . embarrassing contradictions.
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday, July 18, 1882).
I say to myself:
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
"Purely from the aspect of his value to Germany and German culture, Richard Wagner remains a big question mark, perhaps a German misfortune—fateful, at all events. But what does that matter? Is he not very much more than a German phenomenon? It would even seem to me that he belongs nowhere less than he does in Germany, where nothing is ready for him."
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century quoting Nietzsche.
. . . the clock has struck ten . . .
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Marie d’Agoult, . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (translator’s introduction).
. . . la grande mere . . .
Guy de Maupassant, The Vagabond.
. . . was talking . . .
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary.
. . . and playing with the children—Daniel and Blandine von Bulow, Isolde, Eva, and Siegfried Wagner.
Phyllis Stock-Morton, The Life of Marie d’Agoult, alias Daniel Stern.
‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frere!’
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
. . . she remarked abruptly, whereupon . . .
Willa Cather, The Bohemian Girl.
. . . the Countess . . .
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.
. . . grinned and the children giggled.
Willa Cather, The Bohemian Girl.
"The children ought to go to bed," . . .
Thomas Mann, Disorder and Early Sorrow.
. . . Wagner remarked
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
He said, Marie, Marie . . .
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
It’s getting late, my dear, . . .
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
"Run along up to bed now; no excuses!"
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past.
But she pleads for another quarter of an hour; she has promised already, and they do love it so!
Thomas Mann, Disorder and Early Sorrow.
Rubinstein came and . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
There he is!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
. . . entertained us at the piano, . . .
Emma Goldman, Living My Life.
. . . playing . . .
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
. . . a theme from Mozart’s Don Giovanni (Notte e giorno faticar),
John N. Burk, The Life and Works of Beethoven.
. . . in transcription.
The Internet Science Room, DeoxyRibonucleic Acid.
There are those who question . . .
Embracing Mahler’s World: Peter Franklin Welcomes the Arrival in English of the Latest Volume in De La Grange’s Epic Biography.
. . . Rubinstein’s . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Sunday, January 23, 1876).
. . . magpie approach, often incorporating (although not uncritically) loosely paraphrased passages from . . .
Embracing Mahler’s World: Peter Franklin Welcomes the Arrival in English of the Latest Volume in De La Grange’s Epic Biography.
. . . Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, . . .
Clifford Odets, Letter to Margaret Brenman-Gibson.
. . . and others.
Embracing Mahler’s World: Peter Franklin Welcomes the Arrival in English of the Latest Volume in De La Grange’s Epic Biography.
But the man is . . .
Zane Grey, The Light of Western Stars.
. . . a master miniaturist, capable of sketching a variety of emotional states in a few quick tone strokes.
Maynard Solomon, Beethoven.
The elegant Liszt . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . accompanied by his daughter, Cosima, and . . .
Alan M. Dershowitz, Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bulow Case.
. . . the others come in unnoticed to listen
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Monday, January 8, 1883).
Music was the prime loosener, with it thought slipped its moorings and meandered in lethargic maelstroms over deeps of after-dinner ease.
George Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.
It was a glorious moment, noted Cosima, "when Richard, who was seated opposite me (on the little sofa beside the piano), suddenly crawled toward me across the floor and tried to kiss my feet. I seized his head and he tiptoed back to his seat, whispering . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . something . . .
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
. . . about the faulty arrangement: "That is just like the Germans—always carrying on about Mozart, and then they produce such editions!"
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday, July 6, 1869).
' . . . When you find a thing like . . .
Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Recollections of Gustav Mahler.
. . . these transcription errors . . .
J.B. Chittick, What is HIV/AIDS?
. . . in your score, it's as if someone of noble birth were suddenly to discover a swineherd in his family tree!'
Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Recollections of Gustav Mahler.
The Professor . . .
Thomas Mann, Disorder and Early Sorrow.
. . . his cheek on his fist, in a thoughtful, Byronic pose . . .
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
. . . does not succeed in identifying it, though he listens attentively to the end, after which there is great applause . . .
Thomas Mann, Disorder and Early Sorrow.
After that the musicians play a late Beethoven quartet.
Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance.
Is that one of the Beethoven string quartets?
Daniel Ellsberg, Personal Communication with Gary Freedman.
"Yes!"
Philip T. Barford, Beethoven's Last Sonata.
“It must be! It must be!”
Daniel Gregory Mason, The Quartets of Beethoven.
What supernatural delight!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
Beethoven. . . . There is something in him of Nietzsche's superman, long before Nietzsche.
Romain Rolland, Portrait of Beethoven in His Thirtieth Year.
How such a work makes me perfect! One becomes a "masterpiece" oneself.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
There is no "message." Its "truth" is simply what it is.
Philip T. Barford, Beethoven's Last Sonata.
—how harmful for me is this Wagnerian orchestral tone! I call it sirocco. I break out into a disagreeable sweat. My good weather is gone. This music seems perfect to me. It approaches lightly, supplely, politely. It is pleasant, it does not sweat.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
Everyone clapped, and ices and cool drinks were carried around the noisy, milling, shuffling crowd.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
The reception-room was spacious and beautiful.
Thomas Mann, Tristan.
Its pistachio-colored curtain, gleaming piano top, aquarium, olive-green upholstery, and potted plants resembling seaweed made it look like a green, sleepily swaying sea bed.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
A gilt bamboo jardiniere, in which the primulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to the bay window . . .
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.
—When we are talking about the attachment of certain Jews to him, he [Wagner] says, "Yes, they are like flies—the more one drives them away, the more they come."
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Sunday, September 12, 1880).
Wagner . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust (Part II).
. . . says he respects . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, December 21, 1871).
. . . the conductor, Levi . . .
G.B. Shaw on Parsifal.
. . . though, . . .
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
. . . for the very reason that he calls himself Levi straight out, not Lowe or Lewin, etc.
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, December 21, 1871).
At least he kept his name. Not like the others who try to hide their origins.
Charles Wood, Wagner.
I could not help thinking. . . .

This acute remnant of an unresolved father conflict, attached as it was to something as personal as one's name, makes it understandable why . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
My! what's that? Is he out of his mind? Where does he get such thoughts from?
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
Talent, but no genius.
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Friday, January 7, 1870).
Waste of time.
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
Wagner was going into his room without paying any attention to me when the maid . . .
Hugo Wolf, Letter to His Parents.
. . . Mademoiselle Fischer, . . .
Honore de Balzac, Cousin Bette.
. . . said to him in a beseeching voice: “Ah, Herr Wagner, it is a young musician who wishes to speak to you; he has been waiting for you a long time.”
Hugo Wolf, Letter to His Parents.
I cannot bring myself to see him now.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
The young lady nodded her head . . .
Isaac Asimov, Treasury of Humor.
. . . Ah, Herr Wagner, . . .
Hugo Wolf, Letter to His Parents.
“All right! All right!”
James Joyce, An Encounter.
The boy has waited long and patiently; he must not leave unsatisfied.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
I had to wait in a lofty drawing-room with three long windows from floor to ceiling that were like three luminous and bedraped columns. The bent gilt legs and backs of the furniture shone in indistinct curves. The tall marble fireplace had a cold and monumental whiteness. A grand piano stood massively in a corner; with dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a sombre and polished sarcophagus. A high door opened—closed.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
He then came out of his room, . . .
Hugo Wolf, Letter to His Parents.
I rose.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
[He] looked at me, and said: “I have seen you before, I think. You are . . .”
Hugo Wolf, Letter to His Parents.
. . . Rabenstein?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
Ah, no, no!
Richard Wagner, Letter to Mathilde Wesendonk (April 7, 1858).
. . . pardon the slip!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
. . . Raben?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
I must confess that . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . I was born . . .
Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters.
. . . Rabensteiner, . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
. . . a Jew:
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . but I sign . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . .Raben . . .
Richard Wagner, Gotterdammerung.
. . . as a pen name . . .
E. James Lieberman, Acts of Will.
. . . now and then.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
I thought as much!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
For a moment the old man was silent.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar.
I looked at him, lost in astonishment.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
There was something electric about him. It was as if he had single-handedly changed the molecular structure of the room. It struck me that what I’d heard about certain celebrities was true: they had It, whatever the hell It was. Star power isn’t a myth; it is tangible and forceful.
Michael Bergin, The Other Man: A Love Story. John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette, & Me.
He went in front of me and opened the door of the reception room, which was furnished in a truly royal style. In the middle of the room was a couch covered in velvet and silk. Wagner himself was wrapped in a long velvet mantle bordered with fur. When I was inside the room he asked me what I wanted.
Hugo Wolf, Letter to His Parents.
If one could only get some pointers, . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
. . . Maestro, . . .
Pierre-Auguste Rodin, Letter to an Unknown Friend.
. . . it would be easier to grope one’s way ahead.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
What are you saying?
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
“Highly honored master, for a long time I have wanted to hear an opinion on my compositions, and it would be . . .”

Here the master interrupted me and said: “My dear child, I cannot give you an opinion of your compositions; I have far too little time; . . .
Hugo Wolf, Letter to His Parents.
My thoughts are minutes.
Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time quoting Shakespeare.
. . . I can't even get my own letters written. I understand nothing at all about music (Ich verstehe gar nichts von der Musik).”

I asked the master whether I should ever be able really to do anything, and he said to me:

“When I was your age and composing music, no one could tell me then whether I should ever do anything great. You could at most play me your compositions on the piano; but I have no time to hear them. When you are older, and when you have bigger works, and if by chance . . .
Hugo Wolf, Letter to His Parents.
. . . we meet again . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
. . . you shall show me what you have done. But that is no use now; I cannot give you an opinion of them yet.”
Hugo Wolf, Letter to His Parents.
It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far. . . . "I went a little farther," he said, "then still a little farther—till I had gone so far that I . . .
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
—well, never mind.”
Edgar B.P. Darlington, The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings.
'"I had immense plans," he muttered irresolutely.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
He added seriously:
Primo Levi, Beyond Judgement.
“I have never been to any university, neither have I ever heard a classroom lecture, and one of the greatest difficulties I . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius (quoting Moses Mendelssohn).
. . . like the rest of mankind and perhaps even more so; . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . one of the greatest difficulties I had to surmount was that I had to obtain everything by my own effort and industry.”
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius (quoting Moses Mendelssohn).
When I told that master that I took the classics as models, he said: “Good, good. One can't be original at first.” And he laughed and then said. “I wish you, dear friend, much happiness in your career. Go on working steadily, and if . . .
Hugo Wolf, Letter to His Parents.
. . . we should meet again . . .
Anton Chekhov, The Sea Gull.
. . . show me your compositions.”

Upon that I left the master, profoundly moved and impressed.
Hugo Wolf, Letter to His Parents.
I said to myself:
Wilkie Collins, The Legacy of Cain.
How decent of so great a personage to be so human with . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
. . . a burning amateur, . . .
William Golding, Free Fall.
. . . like me.
L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz.
The communication was brief . . .
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure.
. . . (not worth mentioning), but the memory remained—I knew at that moment that I would never forget it and simultaneously I knew or thought I knew . . .
Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena.
. . . what the others . . .
Edith Nesbit, The Story of the Treasure Seekers.
. . . the rest of the tribe . . .
Jack London, To The Man on the Trail.
. . . would say.
Edith Nesbit, The Story of the Treasure Seekers.
I dashed to the library at the first opportunity;
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
Once there, . . .
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery.
. . . I turned with respect to . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . Hermann Levi—
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans.
Levi, . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . who was by no means free of vanity or unaware of his own position, . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . that is, as . . .
Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow.
. . . a Jew in a gentile world, . . .
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans.
. . . looked at me with an amused, vaguely ironic expression:
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . ambivalent at its heart.
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans.
He said:
Genesis.
My friend, you . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
. . . could throw away . . .
Sigmund Freud, Letter to His Fiancée.
. . . all things—
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Excerpt from Don Juan.
. . . make common cause with . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
. . . the devil . . .
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nòrnberg.
. . . as one would carry on a love affair.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
And all for what?
Wilkie Collins, The Evil Genius.
—and all for an old man;
Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Three Taverns.
. . . for a great moment . . .
Sigmund Freud, Letter to His Fiancée.
—one moment . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . with such a person . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
. . . as Wagner
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
But then, . . .
Emile Zola, The Debacle.
. . . Wagner’s disciples . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
. . . whether Jew or gentile . . .
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans.
. . . were all . . .
Wilkie Collins, The Evil Genius.
. . . like that, and remained like that, always.
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
At the end of the evening . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . Wagner and Nietzsche . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work His Century.
. . . went outside. The moon had risen.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
. . . the darkness was punctuated by the distant howls of dogs . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
Please, where do you want to go now?
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
Do you want to accompany? or go on ahead? or go off alone?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols.
The patient . . .
Homer, The Odyssey.
Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche contra Wagner.
. . .answered:
Homer, The Odyssey.
We'll go together.
Arrigo Boito, Falstaff.
Wagner was not in the best of moods, and . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work His Century.
. . . just as . . .
Henry James, Washington Square.
. . . the clock has struck eleven . . .
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nòrnberg.
. . . Nietzsche found himself being driven back . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . home . . .
Homer, The Odyssey.
. . . "through a drizzle" by his host and hostess.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
Now they drove in silence, their lips tightly closed against the cold, occasionally exchanging a word or two, and absorbed in their own thoughts.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
Wagner’s comments were . . .
National Commission on Service-Learning: A Report from the First Meeting.
. . . limited to three phrases: “Eleven o’clock,” “I don’t agree,” and “goodbye.”
Elmer Bendiner, A Time For Angels: The Tragicomic History of the League of Nations.
After they had said goodnight, Wagner angrily censured him to Cosima.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
I do not belong to those who demand that anyone should be chained and sell themselves forever out of 'gratitude.' He has been given a great deal and accomplished much in return.
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Sandor Ferenczi.
He goes his own way.
Richard Wagner, Die Walkure.
So quits!
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Sandor Ferenczi.
Let him visit me no more.
John N. Burk, The Life and Works of Beethoven quoting Beethoven.
I saw no occasion for expressing my special tenderness; I was honest and hard. But he is gone now and we have to bury him . . .
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Sandor Ferenczi.
And isn't now precisely the moment when, insofar as we comprehend this, it is all over?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
A new beginning, after that farewell?
Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus.
“Never.”
Wilkie Collins, The Evil Genius.
A return—after that parting? Impossible!
Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus.
Nietzsche later wrote . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
I thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man's life—a vague impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage; but before the high and ponderous door, between the tall houses of a street as still and decorous as a well-kept alley in a cemetery. I had a vision of him opening his mouth voraciously . . .
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
. . . the way Homer renders a heart-eating cyclops . . .
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.
. . . as if to devour all the earth with all its mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever lived – a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of night, and draped nobly in the fields of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house with me –
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
In an instant the streets became totally black.
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past.
With the weight of the world on his shoulders, he disappeared from view . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . into the night air. Into the cold.
John Le Carre, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
He merely looked back with the expression of a thousand warriors down through time.
Truddi Chase, When Rabbit Howls.
The full moon comes out . . .
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
. . .and, for . . ..
Wilkie Collins, The Evil Genius.
. . . an unforgettable moment . . .
Hermann Levi, Letter to His Father (Rabbi Levi of Giessen).
. . . the now peaceful alley . . .
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
. . . glittered in a still and dazzling splendour . . .
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
All's hushed as midnight yet.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
The watchman walks slowly up the alley, and disappears round the corner.
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
The dog howls, the moon shines. Sooner would I die, die rather than tell you what my midnight heart thinks now.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
That evening finally put an end to my illusions.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone,—and to this day I don't know why I was so jealous of sharing with anyone the peculiar blackness of that experience.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
That's all I'm going to tell about. I could probably tell you what I did after I went home . . . but I don't feel like it. I really don't.
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.
_______________________________________________________________

It was Freud’s belief that . . .
Wendy Patten, Is Play Uniquely Childish?
. . . every human being develops a particular cliché in the experience of . . .
Ken Frieden, Freud's Dream of Interpretation.
. . . ‘love’ and ‘hate’
Peter Blos, Son and Father: Before and Beyond the Oedipus Complex.
Freud could have called it simply a repetition, but he chooses to frame this particularity in the linguistic terms of "a cliché‚ (or even several), which in the course of a life is regularly repeated . . . "
Ken Frieden, Freud's Dream of Interpretation.
. . . like an old tale . . .
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale.
. . . exhaustless in its variations, and ever sung anew
Richard Wagner, Prelude to Tristan und Isolde.
Life follows the literary patterns of a printed and reprinted cliché. Childhood relationships are the prototypes, and adults—like belated authors in literary tradition—are exposed to the danger of simply reproducing their exemplars.
Ken Frieden, Freud's Dream of Interpretation.
For those critics receptive to the arguments of depth psychology, there is no question but that Wagner's documented hatred of Jews was intimately connected to the composer's uncertainty regarding his paternal heritage. It is possible, they argue, that Wagner feared that his father was Jewish. It has become a staple of Wagnerian scholarship that Wagner never knew whether his father was Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner, who died six months after the composer's birth, or the actor, poet, and portrait painter Ludwig Heinrich Christian Geyer, whom Wagner's mother married nine months after the death of her first husband and whom Wagner may have suspected of being a Jew.
Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination.
To those who . . .
Wilkie Collins, The Legacy of Cain.
. . . inquired about . . .
Mary Roberts Rinehart, The Circular Staircase.
. . . his father’s . . .
Thomas Hardy, Life’s Little Ironies.
. . . name and origin . . .
Richard Wagner, Lohengrin.
. . . Wagner would . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His work, His Century.
. . . often take the fifth instinctively.
Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind.
To the end of reckoning . . .
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure.
. . . the Geyer he loved had to be denied.
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
I: "Father Geyer must surely have been your father." R.: "I don't believe that." "Then why the resemblance?" R.: "My mother loved him at the time—elective affinities."
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, December 26, 1878).
Geyer was in all probability his real father . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
—Did he himself grasp that, this shrewdest of all self-deceivers?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols.
I confess my mistrust of every point attested to only by Wagner himself. He did not have pride enough for any truth about himself; nobody was less proud. Entirely like Victor Hugo, he remained faithful to himself in biographical questions, too—he remained an actor.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
It is strangely moving to observe Wagner in 1870 asking Nietzsche, who was looking after the publication of Mein Leben [My Life], to order a vulture (Geyer) engraved . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . in gold leaf on the cover . . .
Eben Moglen, Holmes’ Legacy and the New Constitutional History.
. . . as a decorative emblem for the autobiography. And Wagner takes special pains to urge that this bird be drawn with the characteristic vulture ruff about its neck so that it be easily recognized for what it represented.

The Geyer had in fact become Wagner's crest . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
Sometimes, despite the proverb, intelligent judgment of a book begins with the shape of the cover.
Eben Moglen, Holmes’ Legacy and the New Constitutional History.
(I still recall the strange excitement I felt at the thought that a coat of arms could hide as well as reveal).
George Steiner, Errata: An Examined Life.
What’s in a name?
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.
A clue to the reasons for Wagner's duplicity concerning his paternal parentage may well lie in Nietzsche's famous play upon words to the effect that a Geyer is almost an Adler. In German "Geyer" means "vulture," while "Adler" is the word for "eagle"; and both names representing birds are also frequently encountered German-Jewish names.
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
Of course, human nature and human bigotry being what it is, these beautiful names in no way beautified a despised people. Rather the people denatured the names, which became "Jewish" and therefore objects of derision.
Isaac Asimov, In Memory Yet Green.
He was known as Richard Geyer at least until his confirmation at the age of fourteen, six years after Geyer's death; sometime thereafter he . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . changed his name to . . .
Johannes Ehrmann, Float Like a Butterfly.
. . . Wagner. Not only had the Norns of destiny in a malevolent hour given the boy a Jewish name; they had also placed his birth on the Bruhl, the center of the Leipzig Jewish quarter, and had, to crown their mischief, given his features a hawklike cast with a prominent nose, pointed jaw, and high, intellectual brow; . . . in short, the boy had physical characteristics which ignorance and prejudice associate exclusively with the Jews. It is not unlikely that young Richard Geyer was considered Jewish by various classmates and townsfolk and that his denial was expressed by a vigorous anti-Semitism.
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
He never forgot the humiliation of being referred to as a Gentile in synagogue and a Jew in school.
Lawrence J. Friedman, Identity's Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson.
I had seen and known . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 11).
. . . Jews . . .
Richard Wagner, Judaism in Music.
. . . since I could remember. I just looked at them as I did at rain, or furniture, or food or sleep. But . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 11).
. . . possibly traceable to some early impressions . . .
Mary Roberts Rinehart, The Confession.
. . . I seemed to see them for the first time not as people, but as a thing, a shadow in which I lived, we lived, . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 11).
. . . we Germans . . .
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women.
. . . all other people.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 11).
I must admit that this historical survey leaves many a gap and in many points needs further confirmation. Yet . . .
Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism.