During the next few years Wagner went many journeys, again mainly in search of “cures,” but never got far.  He worked unceasingly at the Ring, with the wildest plans in his head regarding performances.  How wild some of these must have seemed at the time may be judged from the following paragraphs taken from a letter to Uhlig (Dec. 12, 1851).  This is, of course, earlier than the period we are now dealing with; but he never departed from the idea, and it eventually took shape at Bayreuth, a quarter of a century later.  Here is the letter—­

“For the moment, I can only tell you a little about the intended completion of the great dramatic poem which I have now in hand.  Just reflect that before I wrote the poem, Siegfried’s Death, I sketched out the whole myth in all its gigantic sequence, and that poem was the attempt—­which, with regard to our theatre, appeared possible to me—­to give one chief catastrophe of the myth, together with an indication of that sequence.

“Now, when I set to work to write out the music in full, still keeping our modern theatre firmly in mind, I felt how incomplete the proposed undertaking would be; the vast train of events, which first gives to the characters their immense and striking significance, would be presented to the mind merely by means of epic narrative.

“So to make Siegfried’s Death possible, I wrote Young Siegfried; but the more the whole took shape, the more did I perceive, while developing the scenes and music of Young Siegfried, that I had only increased the necessity for a clearer presentation of the whole story to the senses.  I now see that, in order to become intelligible on the stage, I must work out the whole myth in plastic style.  It was not this consideration alone which impelled me to my new plan, but especially the overpowering impressiveness of the subject-matter which I thus acquire for presentation, and which supplies me with a wealth of material for artistic fashioning which it would be a sin to leave unused.  Think of the contents of the narrative of Bruennhilde, in the last scene of Young Siegfried; the fate of Siegmund and Sieglind; the struggle of Wotan with his desire and with custom (Fricka); the noble defiance of the Walkuere; the tragic anger of Wotan in punishing this defiance.

“Think of this from my point of view, with the extraordinary wealth of situations brought together in one coherent drama, and you have a tragedy of most moving effect; one which clearly presents to the senses all that my public needs to have taken in, in order easily to understand, in their widest meaning, Young Siegfried and the Death.  These three dramas will be preceded by a grand introductory play, which will be produced by itself on a special opening festival day.  It begins with Alberich, who pursues the three water-witches of the Rhine with his lust of love, is rejected with merry fooling