necessary to explain why so many high-minded men who knew him
intimately, and loved him passionately, at last fell away from him.
The common theory of Wagnerites, that they were actuated by petty
motives of jealousy, and the like, cannot be entertained for a moment.
With Nietzsche it may well be that ill-health and drugs had begun
their fatal work in 1876; they may account for the violence of his
anti-Wagnerian writings, but surely the cause of his aversion lay
deeper. Similarly with Joachim. Even the noble Liszt, who had stood by
him and battled so bravely for him through the years of his deepest
distress, though he never failed in his admiration of Wagner's art,
seems to have cooled towards him personally when he was in prosperity.
His staunch band of Zurich friends one and all became to some extent
estranged after his exile was annulled. His acknowledged hasty temper
will not account for it; hastiness wounds, but in a generous and
ardently loving nature it does not estrange.

The cause is, in my belief, not far to seek. It lay in the domineering
spirit which is so noticeable in every act of his life, every page of
his writings. His life was his art. He was above all things a man of
action, and all who belonged to him in any relation whatever had to
serve him in his art or cease to be his. His power must be absolute;
talents, energies, life itself if necessary, must be surrendered to
the service of that one supreme purpose. Many were the men and women
who did not flinch from the sacrifice. I need only mention musicians
like Richter, Cornelius, Porges, literati like Glasenapp and Wolzogen.
Many, especially women, were ready to fling to the winds all thought
of personal wellbeing, and life itself. Cosima, to save him and his
art, sacrificed every worldly consideration. Ludwig of Bavaria did the
same, and brought his country to the verge of revolution. Singers,
like Hedwig Reicher Kindermann, literally gave their lives for him.