From Genius Mind to Genius Heart: Wagner, Liszt and Dream's End

Wagner at Bayreuth (shows Franz Liszt at piano) by Gemälde von Georg Papperitz

"If I think of the storm of my heart, the terrible tenacity with which, against my desire, it used to cling to the hope of life, and if even now I feel this hurricane within me, I have at least found a quietus which in wakeful nights helps me to sleep. This is the genuine, ardent longing for death, for absolute unconsciousness, total non-existence; freedom from all dreams is our only final salvation."

"As I have never in life felt the real bliss of love, I must erect a monument to the most beautiful of all my dreams, in which, from beginning to end, that love shall be thoroughly satiated. I have in my head "Tristan and Isolde," the simplest but most full-blooded musical conception; with the "black flag" which floats at the end of it I shall cover myself to die."

Wagner's Letter 168 to Liszt. The Project Gutenberg Etext of Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2, by Francis Hueffer (translator)

I suppose to find one's peer as an artist is an ideal that few artists truly find. In the artist's magic of self-distinction, and in their magnificent ability to penetrate the heart of all, there is a deep and rich yearning to struggle, co-exist and finally, bond with fellow colleagues in the field. The artist, however, is too often moved beyond the spheres of normalized human contact, and thus falls short in sharing the richness of their life with another, except in the case of a briefly interspersed encounter with love, endured while in the sweep and momentum of creation. The recording above bears such testimony, and the heartened dialogue which shifted the reigns from the genius mind to the genius heart in the Romantic age of music has no likely parallel than in the intercourse between Wagner and Liszt which produced such insurmountable passion. 

________

Separated friendships detached by the urban domestic strife of youth boggled into a labyrinth of direction often slides off course over more damaged rails and misbegotten paths, the hard-won industrial groove of 21^st century burning turns with a lifeless tour through the metal of pocket-worn need. 

White Buildings and Labours by Jayanta Bhattacharya

My friend, alone, and huddling over a home-cooked potluck gathering, strides in fully bedecked in Scottish kilt-wear. His face nearly contorted with the oncoming gripe of tears looks down and over his saran-wrapped goods. I comfort his back, emotionally elsewhere, long gone and hopeless for a friendship that’s as irrelevant as the contents of additional soup.

Scots boy in red kilt by Wilhelm Trubner

As I wander off, the air is opaque with a dark, runny stirring. The world commotion breathes heavily. A musical engagement is torn from my wife and I as our contact weans her ear from a phone of marital divorce, and the sky blackens with the frost of an easy death. 

Satire on Romantic Suicide by Leonardo Alenza Y Nieto

I tip toe up to my experimental end. I’ll have no burial, nor cremation, a sky birth in the way of my choice, a bungee jump without a bungee, and I dress for the occasion exactly as I would for my big day. My imagination jumps.  

_________

A great poverty aligns to the roof of the all-consuming jaw,
          That sweeps with the tornado dawn over the rushing plains
...
As American lore, talking through the human trees
          In a grave, over-worked rush to the gambled fortune
                 hidden in the proud dream
          To unite and be loyal to nothing,
          And yet return from the hollow
                 blank rough of our creative winter

excerpt from "Post-War Television Rites at the Dam of Time"