[336] In the Entwurf zur Organisation eines Deutschen National-Theaters für das Konigreich Sachsen (G.S., ii. 248) he speaks of "demanding the fullest and most active interest of the whole nation in an artistic establishment that, conjointly with all the other arts, has for its object the ennobling of taste and manners." He does not develop the idea, however.
[337] See the important letter of September 1850, in the Uhlig correspondence.
[338] Mein Leben, p. 546.
[339] Mein Leben, pp. 566 ff.
[340] See the passionate and almost hysterical passage commencing "Not ye wise ones, therefore, are the inventors, but the Folk, for Need drove the Folk to invention." Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft, in G.S., iii. 53.
[341] G.S., iii. 60.
[342] Had he been a trifle less Teutonic, less given to the national failing of imagining that a new truth has been established when all that has happened is that a new word has been manufactured or a mystic meaning perceived in an old one, he might have reflected that in other languages there is no etymological connection between art and the capacity for "canning."
[343] Mein Leben, pp. 691, 692.
[344] He plainly knew nothing of the sculpture of the Middle Ages, and regarded all modern sculpture as an imitation of the antique.
[345] This was the first form of the drama that ultimately became the Ring. It virtually corresponded with the present Twilight of the Gods. He afterwards saw the necessity of setting visibly before the audience a good deal that was only implied or narrated in Siegfried's Death. Accordingly a prefatory drama was written and called Young Siegfried. The same process was twice repeated, the Valkyrie and Rhinegold being added in turn. Young Siegfried was then entitled Siegfried, and Siegfried's Death became The Twilight of the Gods.