Saturday, August 06, 2011

Significant Moments: Goethe and Wagner

I have made a minor revision to my book Significant Moments (which is highlighted in yellow).  The entire passage from which this excerpt is drawn is homospatial to some extent, I suppose.  According to Albert Rothenberg, M.D. the term homospatial refers to superimposing two or more images or ideas on top of each other.  In this passage I have superimposed the life and writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (and his famous trip to Italy) on top of Wagner's trip to Italy in 1858, where he wrote the second act of his opera, Tristan und Isolde -- which, coincidentally, he completed on the afternoon of August 6, 1858.
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His first wife . . .
Thomas Hardy, Desperate Remedies.
     . . . Minna's interception of a . . .
John Deathridge and Carl Dahlhaus, The New Grove Wagner.
         . . . love-letter . . .
Thomas Hardy, Desperate Remedies.
                . . . addressed to Mathilde (one of the few and most wildly interpreted documents to have escaped the grasp of Wagner's heirs) precipitated on 7 April 1858 a catastrophe that eventually led to his departure . . .
John Deathridge and Carl Dahlhaus, The New Grove Wagner.
                         . . . for Italy—
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters (explanatory notes).
     Yes—for a holiday, for a long holiday . . .
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
       . . . altogether alone . . .
Thomas Hardy, Life’s Little Ironies.
             . . . in Venice.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters (Diary entry,
October 5, 1786).
     Ah, Venice! What a glorious city!
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
     There, there would I go with you, O my beloved!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister.
        . . . (as he recorded in his journal) . . .
Booth Tarkington, His Own People.
     If that cannot be, I would not dwell where you are, but rather be alone in that world into which I now go forth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letter to Charlotte von Stein.
     O Mathilde!
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo.
     I can't tell you how glad I am to have got away.  Dear friend, how strange is the human heart!  I love you, we were inseparable--yet I can leave you and be content.  I know you will forgive me.  Were not all my attachments designed by fate to intimidate a heart like mine?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther.
      My Dear Mathilde,--
Mathilde Marchesi, Marchesi and Music: Passages from the Life of a Famous Singing Teacher.
     Take my entire soul as a morning salutation!
Richard Wagner, Letter to Mathilde Wesendonk (April 7, 1858).
His letters were returned to him unopened: but he and Mathilde each kept a diary which was read by the other at a later date. Wagner’s diary, kept in the form of letters to Mathilde, gives us an incomparable picture of his inner life during his Venice sojourn.
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
    Leaving behind the growing frustrations of . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters (editor’s note).
     . . . creative . . .
K.R. Eissler, Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study 1775-1786.
            . . . work, a difficult love-affair, and lack of time to write, he discovers himself again . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters (editor’s note).
                   . . . in the wondrous island city . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters (Diary entry,
September 28, 1786).
                          . . . as a sensuous being and an artist.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters (editor’s note).

1 comment:

My Daily Struggles said...

"Take my entire soul as a morning salutation!
Richard Wagner, Letter to Mathilde Wesendonk (April 7, 1858)."

Oddly enough, the subject matter of this pivotal letter that Wagner wrote to Mathilde was about the subject of Goethe's Faust. Wagner and Mathilde had had an argument about the meaning of Faust, and Wagner wrote this letter to explain his interpretation of Goethe's play. Truly uncanny!!