Tannhäuser

Ibsen, otherwise in spirit and style purely Greek, and dealing as the Greeks did with the emotions of the soul, has realised the changed and infinitely more complex conditions of life ; our self-appointed spiritual guides notwithstanding, or, rather, withstanding in vain. Consequently it is impossible any more to divine whether virtue or vice (as understood of old) will cause the irreparable catastrophe which is the one element of drama which we may still (in the work of a modern dramatist) await with any degree of confidence. I trust that I may be forgiven for adopting the idea that Tannhauser was one of those mysterious Germans whose reputed existence so perturbed the Middle Ages ; in short, a Rosicrucian. Some people may be surprised that a Member of that illustrious but unhappy fraternity should take cogniz- ance of what my friend Bhikku Ananda Mitriya calls "hog- nosed Egyptian deities," still more that he should show reverence to symbols like the B. V. M. and the Holy Grail. But the most learned and profound students of the Mysteries of the Rosy Cross assure me that it was the special excellence of these mystics that they declined to be bound down by any particular system in their sublime search for the Eternal and the Real. Under these circumstances I have not scrupled to subvert anything that appeared to me to need subverting in the interests, always identical, of beauty and of truth. Anachron- ism may be found piled upon anachronism, and symbolism mixed with symbolism. II