All things considered, I could never have survived my youth without Wagnerian music. For I seemed condemned to the society of Germans. If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression., he may have to take to hashish. Well, I had to@ take to Wagner. Wagner is the counterpoison to everything essentially German-he is a poison, I do not, deny it. From the moment that Tristan was arranged for the piano-my compliments, Herr von Biilow!-I was a Wagnerite. I deemed Wagner's previous works beneath m@they were too common, too "German.77 . . . But to this day l,am still looking for a work to equal Tristan in dangerous fascination, that gruesome yet sweet quality of infinity; I seek among all the arts in vain. All the bizarreries of Leonardo da Vinci lose their charm with the first note of Tristan. It is absolutely Wagner's non plifs idtra; the Mastersingers and the Ring were mere relaxation to him. To become more healthy-this is a step backwards for a nature like Wagner's. I regard it as a first-class bit of good luck to have lived at the right time, and to have lived precisely among Germans, in order to be ripe for this work: so strongly in me works the curiosity of the psychologist. The world must be a poor thing for him who has never been unhealthy enough for this "voluptuousness of Hell": it is allowable, it is even imperative, that one here employ a mystic formula. I suppose I know better than any one else the prodigies of which Wagner was capable, the fifty worlds of strange ecstasies to reach which no one but he had win,-s strong enough; and as I'am today sufficiently powerful to turn even the most dubious and dangerous things to my own advantage, and thus to grow more powerful, I name Wagner as the greatest benefactor of my life. The bond which unites us is the fact that we have suff ered greater agony, even at each other's hands, than most -men of this century are able to bear; and this will associate our names forever. For, just as Wagner is merely a misunderstanding among Germans, so surely am I, and ever will be. You must first have two centuries of psychological and artistic discipline, my dear countrymen! But you can never turn back the hands of the clock.
