create “Tristan.”  And in “Tristan” we commence with a fleshly love, as intense as that Tannhaeuser knew; but by reason of its own energy, its own excess, it rises to a spiritual love as free from grossness as any dreamed of by Elizabeth or Wolfram, and far surpassing theirs in exaltation.  This change he depicted in a way as simple as it was marvellous, so that as we watch the drama and listen to the music we experience it within ourselves and our inner selves are revealed to us.  Nothing comes between us and the passions expressed.  Tristan and Isolda are passion in its purest integrity, naked souls vibrating with the keenest emotion; they have no idiosyncrasies to be sympathised with, to be allowed for; they are generalisations, not characters, and in them we see only ourselves reflected on the stage—­ourselves as we are under the spell of Wagner’s music and of his drama.  For “Tristan” seems to me the most wonderful of Wagner’s dramas, far more wonderful than “Parsifal,” far more wonderful than “Tannhaeuser.”  There is no stroke in it that is not inevitable, none that does not immensely and immediately tell; and, despite its literary quality, one fancies it could not fail to make some measure of its effect were it played without the music.  Think of the first act.  The scene is the deck of the ship; the wind is fresh, and charged with the bitterness of the salt sea; and Isolda sits there consumed with burning anger and hate of the man she loves, whose life she spared because she loved him, and who now rewards her by carrying her off, almost as the spoil of war, to be the wife of his king.  It has been said that Tolstoi asserted for the first time in “The Kreuzer Sonata” that hate and love were the same passion.  But the truth is, Wagner knew it long before Tolstoi, just as Shakespeare knew it long before Wagner; and the whole of this first act turns on it.  Isolda sends for Tristan and tells him he has wronged her, and begs him to drink the cup of peace with her.  Tristan sees precisely what she means, and, loving her, drinks the proffered poison as an atonement for the wrong he has done her, and for his treachery to himself in winning her, for ambition’s sake, as King Mark’s bride instead of taking her as his own.  But the moment her hatred is satisfied Isolda finds life intolerable without it, without love; her love a second time betrays her; and she seizes the poison and drinks also.  Then comes the masterstroke.  Done with this world, with nothing but death before them, the two confess their long-pent love; in their exalted state passion comes over them like a flood; in the first rush of passion, honour, shame, friendship seem mere names of illusions, and love is the only real thing in life; and finally, the death draught being no death draught, but a slight infusion of cantharides, the two passionately cling to each other, vaguely wondering what all the noise is about, while the ship reaches land and all the people shout and the trumpets blow.