I Wish Explicity That The Two
Articles On The "Weisse Dame" And "Alfonso And Estrella" Should
Appear As Soon As Possible, And Immediately Afterwards The
"Flying Dutchman", So That By The End Of September This Series Of
Twelve Opera Discussions May Have All Appeared In The Neue
Zeitschrift.
At the same time with the proofs of the article on the "Weisse
Dame" you will receive the "Alfonso and Estrella" article, and,
as soon as these are out, the "Flying Dutchman", which must be
published in September - for various reasons, which cannot well be
explained in a letter.
Raff's book "Die Wagnerfrage" [The Wagner Question] has arrived
here today, and I have already read it. The author is so pleased
with himself that it would be a miracle if his readers were
joined to him in the same proportion, and Raff is specially at
variance with miracles! -
This book makes on me the effect of a pedagogic exuberance. Even
the occasional good views (on harmony, for example) that it
contains are obscured by a self-sufficiency in the tone and
manner of them, of which one may well complain as insupportable.
What Raff wishes to appear spoils four-fifths (to quote the time
which he adapts so ridiculously to "Lohengrin" of what he might
be. He is perpetually getting on scientific stilts, which are by
no means of a very solid wood. Philosophic formulas are sometimes
the envelope, the outside shell, as it were, of knowledge; but it
may also happen that they only show empty ideas, and contain no
other substance than their own harsh terminology.
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