I hold so lightly to
all phenomena that they end by passing over me like gleams over a
landscape, and are gone without leaving any impression. Thought is a
kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can
make transparent the mountains and everything that exists. It is by love
only that one keeps hold upon reality, that one recovers one's proper
self, that one becomes again will, force, and individuality. Love could
do everything with me; by myself and for myself I prefer to be
nothing....
I have the imagination of regret and not that of hope. My
clear-sightedness is retrospective, and the result with me of
disinterestedness and prudence is that I attach myself to what I have no
chance of obtaining....
May 27, 1857. (Vandoeuvres. [Footnote: Also a village in the
neighborhood of Geneva.])--We are going down to Geneva to hear the
"Tannhaeuser" of Richard Wagner performed at the theater by the German
troup now passing through. Wagner's is a powerful mind endowed with
strong poetical sensitiveness. His work is even more poetical than
musical. The suppression of the lyrical element, and therefore of
melody, is with him a systematic _parti pris_. No more duos or trios;
monologue and the _aria_ are alike done away with. There remains only
declamation, the recitative, and the choruses.
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