Wagner as Man & Artist

by Ernest Newman

[264] Glasenapp, vi. 139.

[265] See the poem Siegfried-Idyl, in the G.S., xii. 372.

[266] Seraphine Mauro. See p. 106.

[267] Cornelius, Ausgewählte Briefe, i. 640 ff.

[268] The gentle and honourable Cornelius—whom it obviously pains to have to say a word in disparagement of Wagner—knew that his only chance of developing his artistic nature along its own lines was to avoid coming too much under the influence of the much stronger personality of the older man; he should, he says, "hatch only Wagnerian eggs."

[269] Letter of 31st May 1854, in Peter Cornelius' Ausgewählte Briefe, i. 767.

[270] Ausgewählte Briefe, i. 770, 771.

[271] Ibid., i. 774.

[272] Ausgewählte Briefe, i. 784. At a later time Cornelius did yield to Wagner's solicitations and take up his abode for a time in Munich.

[273] All testimonies agree as to the extraordinary expressiveness and dramatic vivacity of his reading—as indeed of his conversation also. See Cornelius, Ausgewählte Briefe, i. 623, Weissheimer, Erlebnisse, pp. 89, 90, and Liszt's letter to the Princess Wittgenstein, in Briefe, iv. 145. His tumultuous conversation used to give King Ludwig a headache.