Remember Me by David Stacton

someone else, it did not much matter whom or whose. He felt himself once more carried along by that inferior wave which he feared only after it had reached a coast. He did not care. Children are perfectionists. They long to destroy themselves, so that they may be reborn the next day. And in keeping his imagination alive, he had also kept something of the child he had always longed to be. He fell asleep, feeling the dawn of a blessed irresponsibility.
    Next day he saw Cosima von Bülow riding across the Konigsplatz beneath his windows, in an open carriage. He knew who she was. He felt she had something to do with him. He pulled himself up abruptly, sensing something he did not quite understand, but only because he did not want to understand it, for the police brought him the town gossip every day.
    He put his knowledge carefully away. And it would have stayed tucked away, had Wagner not chosen to overstep himself. Perhaps all favourites become over-weaning occasionally, but Wagner chose the wrong occasion.
    The occasion was a command performance of Tristan. Ludwig had wanted them to share the work together. Hehad sent over designs for the stage sets. Wagner, whose attention to detail was almost mentally unbalanced, would not have it so. He sent the designs back. It was another rebuff.
    As deer come down warily to the water at evening, when the critics are away, so does royalty refresh itself uncertainly at works of art, afraid that its taste may be attacked, yet eager for nourishment. Sitting in the theatre, Ludwig did not greatly care. If he wanted his pennyworth of applause, Wagner should have it. It proved him the smaller man. But that afternoon Wagner had given him political advice, and in politics he had no right to meddle. Nor should the theatre be entirely his. After all, it was Ludwig’s theatre.
    The performance had been tended with loving care. Wagner had insisted upon a royal audience. Almost the whole family was there. That he should look down at the stage and see his soul naked and exposed to the indifferent gaze of his relatives filled Ludwig with fury. It seemed to him that Wagner had boned him as one would bone a fish, and flung the fillets on the stage for the world to laugh at. Fortunately his relatives were too stupid to realize what was happening. Only the Liebestod roused part of their bodies against their will, in a sensual way. For it was not really spiritual music: it was emotional chiropractic, designed to manipulate a limping soul.
    He began to watch eagerly. Lohengrin had failed, but perhaps this new work, Tristan, might provide the answer. For it is not for Isolde that Tristan dies, but through her. Only in casting her off, can he cast life off, and so be free. Ludwig became intent. As once travellers rolled cannon balls down the mystical corridors of Hadrian’s tomb, so would he vanish into the dark corridors of this masterpiece ,to hear his destiny echo at the end of it and to forget the man who made it.
    It was very stirring. Ludwig decided to be magnanimous. When the curtain fell, he allowed Wagner to take his bow from the royal box, if only because it had the added merit of annoying the audience. Let Wagner be vulgar if he would, and if little pieces of ostentation like this pleased him, very well. He could produce a masterpiece, and that was all one could demand of anyone. A masterpiece was as rare as mutual love, perhaps because a mutual love was one. But Ludwig did not want to see any more of him. It was the work he wished to see. The man merely interrupted his thoughts. He fled after the performance to Hohenschwangau.
    That was the highest and the most ancient of the family schlossen. It was from there that the original Lohengrin had set forth on his pilgrimage. Ludwig felt healthier among those heights and snows. He would not descend again to the capital until he must.
    Tristan had uplifted him. He wanted to think about it. He also wanted to try an experiment. He would always be grateful