and art were needed for another great culture today, and that Wagner was pointing the way. It was The Birth of Tragedy. It offended purely philological circles, but it served its purpose none the less; f and the light it threw on old Greek life is perhaps more important than was commonly thought at the time. g Wagner circles, and above all Wagner himself, were profoundly stirred. He went freshly to work on the last act of "Götterdämmerung," and said he knew not how he could have been so fortunate. Nietzsche was even ready to go about Germany giving lectures in behalf of the Bayreuth idea, and composed an "Appeal to the German nation." h In May, 1872, he was one of the reverent company that attended the laying of the corner-stone of the Bayreuth theater, and listened to the strains of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony rendered under the master's direction. "There was something in the air," he said in commenting on the occasion, "that I have nowhere else experienced, something quite indescribable and of richest promise."[1]
About this time Wagner left Tribschen for his permanent home in Bayreuth, and Nietzsche did not see him so frequently thereafter. The idyllic period in their mutual relations proved to be over. The physical separation may have given Nietzsche an opportunity for critical reflection such as he had hardly had before; in any case, questionings, doubts began to arise, and somewhat clouded his simple faith. Yet his main feeling continued to be that of loyalty, and he not only wrote pamphlets or little books to serve the general cause of a new culture (the first three Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen), but a special one on Wagner ("Richard Wagner in Bayreuth"). This last was at once an elaborate critical study and a splendid tribute. In it Bayreuth appears as a "morning consecration for the day of battle"[2]—the book published on the eve of the opening in 1876. It was really an appeal and a challenge to the German-speaking peoples on Wagner's and Bayreuth's behalf. i Wagner, quite overcome, wrote to him, "Friend, your book is immense.… Where did you get the knowledge of me?" and he urged
