Friedhold had initiated him in former days, and he now comes to reproach him for his crime, and to bring him before the Order, who will judge him.  In the original version of the poem Guntram complies, and sacrifices his passion to his vow.  But while Strauss had been travelling in the East he had conceived a sudden horror for this Christian annihilation of will, and Guntram revolts along with him, and refuses to submit to the rules of his Order.  He breaks his lute—­a symbol of false hope in the redemption of humanity through faith—­and rouses himself from the glorious dreams in which he used to believe, for he sees they are shadows that are scattered by the light of real life.  He does not abjure his former vows; but he is not the same man he was when he made them.  While his experience was immature he was able to believe that a man ought to submit himself to rules, and that life should be governed by laws.  A single hour has enlightened him.  Now he is free and alone—­alone with his spirit.  “I alone can lessen my suffering; I alone can expiate my crime.  Through myself alone God speaks to me; to me alone God speaks. Ewig einsam.”  It is the proud awakening of individualism, the powerful pessimism of the Super-man.  Such an expression of feeling gives the character of action to renouncement and even to negation itself, for it is a strong affirmation of the will.

I have dwelt rather at length on this drama on account of the real value of its thought and, above all, on account of what one may call its autobiographical interest.  It was at this time that Strauss’s mind began to take more definite form.  His further experience will develop that form still more, but without making any important change in it.

Guntram was the cause of bitter disappointment to its author.  He did not succeed in getting it produced at Munich, for the orchestra and singers declared that the music could not be performed.  It is even said that they got an eminent critic to draw up a formal document, which they sent to Strauss, certifying that Guntram was not meant to be sung.  The chief difficulty was the length of the principal part, which took up by itself, in its musings and discourses, the equivalent of an act and a half.  Some of its monologues, like the song in the second act, last half an hour on end.  Nevertheless, Guntram was performed at Weimar on 16 May, 1894.  A little while afterwards Strauss married the singer who played Freihild, Pauline de Ahna, who had also created Elizabeth in Tannhaeuser at Bayreuth, and who has since devoted herself to the interpretation of her husband’s Lieder.

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