Yet it does not really matter, for joy is there, nevertheless; and so splendid was the first inspiration of the work that the years have not dimmed its brilliancy.  One would like to end with Siegfried, and escape the gloomy Goetterdaemmerung.  For those who have sensitive feelings the fourth day of the Tetralogy has a depressing effect.  I remember the tears I have seen shed at the end of the Ring, and the words of a friend, as we left the theatre at Bayreuth and descended the hill at night:  “I feel as though I were coming away from the burial of someone I dearly loved.”  It was truly a time of mourning.  Perhaps there was something incongruous in building such a structure when it had universal death for its conclusion—­or at least in making the whole an object of show and instruction. Tristan achieves the same end with much more power, as the action is swifter.  Besides that, the end of Tristan is not without comfort, for life there is terrible.  But it is not the same in Goetterdaemmerung; for in spite of the absurdity of the spell which is set upon the love of Siegfried and Bruennhilde, life with them is happy and desirable, since they are beings capable of love, and death appears to be a splendid but awful catastrophe.  And one cannot say the Ring breathes a spirit of renunciation and sacrifice like Parsifal; renunciation and sacrifice are only talked about in the Ring; and, in spite of the last transports which impel Bruennhilde to the funeral pyre, they are neither an inspiration nor a delight.  One has the impression of a great gulf yawning at one’s feet, and the anguish of seeing those one loves fall into it.

I have often regretted that Wagner’s first conception of Siegfried changed in the course of years; and in spite of the magnificent denouement of Goetterdaemmerung (which is really more effective in a concert room, for the real tragedy ends with Siegfried’s death), I cannot help thinking with regret how fine a more optimistic poem from this revolutionary of ’48 might have been.  People tell me that it would then have been less true to life.  But why should it be truthful to depict life only as a bad thing?  Life is neither good nor bad it is just what we make it, and the result of the way in which we look at it.  Joy is as real as sorrow, and a very fertile source of action.  What inspiration there is in the laugh of a great man!  Let us welcome, therefore, the sparkling if transient gaiety of Siegfried.

Wagner wrote to Malwida von Meysenbug:  “I have, by chance, just been reading Plutarch’s life of Timoleon.  That life ended very happily—­a rare and unheard-of thing, especially in history.  It does one good to think that such a thing is possible.  It moved me profoundly.”

I feel the same when I hear Siegfried.  We are rarely allowed to contemplate happiness in great tragic art; but when we may, how splendid it is, and how good for one!