“You ask me for news of my opera.[188] Good Heavens!  I should be content if I could write the tiniest little Liedchen.  And an opera, now?...  I firmly believe that it is all over with me....  I could as well speak Chinese as compose anything.  It is horrible....  What I suffer from this inaction I cannot tell you.  I should like to hang myself.”

To Hugo Faisst he wrote on 21 June, 1894: 

“You ask me the cause of my great depression of spirit, and would pour balm on my wounds.  Ah yes, if you only could!  But no herb grows that could cure my sickness; only a god could help me.  If you can give me back my inspirations, and wake up the familiar spirit that is asleep in me, and let him possess me anew, I will call you a god and raise altars to your name.  My cry is to gods and not to men; the gods alone are fit to pronounce my fate.  But however it may end, even if the worst comes, I will bear it—­yes, even if no ray of sunshine lightens my life again....  And with that we will, once for all, turn the page and have done with this dark chapter of my life.”

[Footnote 188:  The writing of an opera was Wolf’s great dream and intention for many years.]

This letter—­and it is not the only one—­recalls the melancholy stoicism of Beethoven’s letters, and shows us sorrows that even the unhappy Beethoven did not know.  And yet how can we tell?  Perhaps Beethoven, too, suffered similar anguish in the sad days that followed 1815, before the last sonatas, the Missa Solemnis, and the Ninth Symphony had awaked to life in him.

* * * * *

In March, 1895, Wolf lived once more, and in three months had written the piano score of Corregidor.  For many years he had been attracted towards the stage, and especially towards light opera.  Enthusiast though he was for Wagner’s work, he had declared openly that it was time for musicians to free themselves from the Wagnerian Musik-Drama.  He knew his own gifts, and did not aspire to take Wagner’s place.  When one of his friends offered him a subject for an opera, taken from a legend about Buddha, he declined it, saying that the world did not yet understand the meaning of Buddha’s doctrines, and that he had no wish to give humanity a fresh headache.  In a letter to Grohe, on 28 June, 1890, he says: 

“Wagner has, by and through his art, accomplished such a mighty work of liberation that we may rejoice to think that it is quite useless for us to storm the skies, since he has conquered them for us.  It is much wiser to seek out a pleasant nook in this lovely heaven.  I want to find a little place there for myself, not in a desert with water and locusts and wild honey, but in a merry company of primitive beings, among the tinkling of guitars, the sighs of love, the moonlight, and such-like—­in short, in a quite ordinary opera-comique, without any rescuing spectre