[356] G.S., iv. 2.
[357] "But if I wish to show that plastic art, being only an artificial art, one abstracted from real art, must cease entirely in the future; if consequently to this plastic art—painting and sculpture—that to-day claims to be the principal art, I utterly deny a life in the future, you will admit that this should not and could not be done with two strokes of the pen." (Letter of 12th January 1850; Briefe an Uhlig, &c., p. 26.)
[358] Letter 14 to Uhlig (undated), in Briefe, p. 46. Mr. Shedlock, in his admirable English version of these letters, translates "art-egoistic" (künstlerisch-egoistischen) in the second sentence as "artificial egoistic," having apparently read "künstlerisch" as "künstlich."
[359] Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde, in G.S., iv. 315. He is discussing the reasons that led him to give up the idea of a play on the subject of Friedrich Barbarossa.
[360] "In modern speech, poetical creation is impossible; that is to say, a poetic purpose cannot be realised in it, but only suggested" (sondern eben nur als solche ausgesprochen werden). Opera and Drama, in G.S., iv. 98. There are many other passages of the same tenour.
[361] G.S., iii. 178 ff.
[362] Briefwechsel zwischen Wagner und Liszt, i. 324.
[363] G.S., iv. 128, 129.
[364] In the scene of the Contest of Song in the second Act of Tannhäuser, he says, "my real object was, if possible, to compel the hearer, for the first time in the history of opera, to take an interest in a poetic idea, and to follow it up in all its necessary developments." Mein Leben, p. 364.
[365] Letter of 8th September 1850; Briefwechsel, i. 75.