[762W-{11/1/70} CD Vol. I, p. 291]
[P. 291] {anti-FEUER} [Wagner notes that:] “… everything depends on facing the truth, even if it is unpleasant. What about myself in relation to Schopenhauer’s philosophy – when I was completely Greek, an optimist? But I made the difficult admission, and from this act of resignation emerged ten times stronger.” [762W-{11/1/70} CD Vol. I, p. 291]
[763W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 63-64]
[P. 63] {FEUER} “I believe that the most positive fact we shall ever ascertain about Beethoven the man, in the very best event, will stand in the same relation to Beethoven the musician as General Bonaparte to the ‘Sinfonia Eroica.’ Viewed from this side of consciousness, the great musician must always remain a complete enigma to us. At all to solve this enigma, we undoubtedly must strike an altogether different path from that on which it is possible, up to a certain point at least, to follow the creative work of Goethe and Schiller: and that point itself becomes a vanishing one exactly at the spot where creation passes from a conscious to an [P. 64] unconscious act, i.e. where the poet no longer chooses the aesthetic Form, but it is imposed upon him by his inner vision (Anschauung) of the Idea itself. Precisely in this beholding of the Idea, however, resides the fundamental difference between poet and musician … .
{FEUER} The said diversity comes out quite plainly in the plastic artist, when compared with the musician; betwixt them stands the poet, inclining toward the plastic artist in his conscious fashioning (Gestalten), approaching the musician on the mystic ground of his unconsciousness.” [763W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 63-64]
[764W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 65]
[P. 65] {SCHOP} “But it was Schopenhauer who first defined the position of Music among the fine arts with philosophic clearness, ascribing to it a totally different nature from that of either plastic or poetic art. He starts with wonder at Music’s speaking a language immediately intelligible by everyone, since it needs no whit of intermediation through abstract concepts (Begriffe); which completely distinguishes it from Poetry, in the first place, whose sole material consists of concepts employed by it to visualise the Idea.” [764W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 65]
[765W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 65]
[P. 65] {SCHOP} “ … Schopenhauer believes he must recognise in Music itself an idea of the world, since he who could entirely translate it into abstract concepts would have found withal a philosophy to explain the world itself.” [765W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 65]
[766W-{9-12/70} Beethoven: PW Vol. V, p. 66-67]
[P. 66] {SCHOP} “In making use of this material supplied us by the philosopher I fancy I shall do best to begin with a remark in which Schopenhauer declines to accept the Idea derived from a knowledge of ‘relations’ as the essence of the Thing-in-itself, but regards it merely as expressing the objective character of things, and therefore as still concerned with their phenomenal appearance. ‘And we should not understand this character itself’ – so Schopenhauer goes on to say
