goodness knows how long with Venus; then he forsook her, and she vowed
to take vengeance on him. He returned to his friends, and entered for a
competition in minstrelsy. While in the middle of his song, which would
have gained him the prize, Venus visited him with sudden madness, and
throwing away all cant about pure platonic love, he chanted the praise
of foul carnal lust and the joy of living with the Goddess of Love in
the heart of the hills. Coming to himself, he went on a pilgrimage to
Rome, and asked and was refused the Pope's forgiveness. Then he returned
to Venus, and so the story ends with the eternal damnation of
Tannhäuser, just as the ancient legend of the Flying Dutchman ends with
the eternal damnation of Vanderdecken.

It need hardly be said that this did not satisfy Wagner. He did not like
to see people eternally damned; drab, hopeless tragedy was not for him.
In nearly every opera we find peace and hope at the close, or even
ecstasy in death, as in the _Dusk of the Gods (Götterdämmerung)_ and
_Tristan_. So he promptly made use of Elisabeth in _TANNHÄUSER_,
though, as we shall see, the redeeming act is not so sharply defined as
in the _Dutchman_. In the first scene Tannhäuser is sleeping in the arms
of Venus, while bacchanals indulge in riotous dances. Tannhäuser
suddenly starts from sleep: he has dreamed of his home as it was before
his fall--of the village chime, the birds, the flowers, the sweet air;
and he asks permission to return from this hot, steaming cave of vice to
the fair clean earth. Venus in vain plays upon him with all her arts and
wiles; he sings his magnificent song in praise of her and her beauty,
but insists that he must go, and ends with a frenzied appeal to the
Virgin. In a moment the illusion is broken: Venus, her luxurious cavern,
her nymphs and satyrs, all disappear. There is a minute's blackness,
then the light returns, and Tannhäuser is lying in the roadside before a
cross. The sky is blue and the trees and grass are green, and a