{FEUER] Not one of the most affecting, not one of the most distinctiveP. 334] Christian myths belongs by right of generation to the Christian spirit, such as we commonly understand it: it has inherited them all from the purely human intuitions (Anschauungen) of earlier time, and merely moulded them to fit its own peculiar tenets. To purge them of this heterogeneous influence, and thus enable us to look straight into the pure humanity of the eternal poem: such was the task of the more recent inquirer [* Translator’s Footnote: “In view of the author’s preface to the two volumes in which this Communication was included (see page 25 of the present volume), it would appear that the allusion is to Ludwig Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity.”], a task which it must necessarily remain for the poet to complete.”[564W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 333-334]
[565W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 334-335]
[P. 334] {FEUER} “Just as the main feature of the mythos of the ‘Flying Dutchman’may be clearly traced to an earlier setting in the Hellenic Odyssey; just as this same Ulysses in his wrench from the arms of Calypso, in his flight from the charms of Circe, and in his yearning for the earthly wife of cherished home, embodied the Hellenic prototype of a longing such as we find in ‘Tannhaeuser’ immeasurably enhanced and widened in its meaning: so do we already meet in the Grecian mythos - nor is even this by any means its oldest form – the outlines of the myth of - ‘Lohengrin.’ Who does not know the story of ‘Zeus and Semele’? The god loves a mortal woman, and for sake of this love, approaches her in human shape; but the mortal learns that she does not know her lover in his true estate, and, urged by Love’s own ardour, demands that her spouse shall show himself to physical sense in the full substance of his being. Zeus knows that she can never grasp him, that the unveiling of his godhead must destroy her; himself he suffers by this knowledge, beneath the stern compulsion to fulfill his loved one’s dreaded wish: he signs his own death-warrant, when the fatal splendour of his godlike presence strikes Semele dead. – Was it, forsooth, some priestly fraud that shaped this myth? How insensate to attempt to argue from the selfish state-religious, caste-like exploitation of the noblest human longing, back to the origin and the genuine meaning of ideals which [P. 335] blossomed from a human fancy that stamped man first as Man! Twas no God, that sang the meeting of Zeus and Semele; but Man, in his humanest of yearnings. Who had taught Man that a God could burn with love toward earthly Woman? For certain, only Man himself; who however high the object of his yearning may soar above the limits of his earthly wont, can only stamp it with the imprint of his human nature. From the highest sphere to which the might of his desire may bear him up, he finally can only long again for what is purely human, can only crave the taste of his own nature, as the one thing worth desiring. What then is the inmost essence of this Human Nature, whereto the desire which reaches forth to farthest distance turns back at last, for its only possible appeasement? It is the Necessity of Love; and the essence of this love, in its truest utterance, is the longing for utmost physical reality, for fruition in an object that can be grasped by all the senses, held fast with all the force of actual being. In this finite, physically sure embrace, must not the God dissolve and disappear? Is not the mortal, who had yearned for God, undone, annulled? Yet is not Love, in its truest, highest essence, herein revealed?” [565W-{6-8/51} A Communication To My Friends: PW Vol. I, p. 334-335]
