Tannhauser

"Although based on scenes from Wagner’s opera, the Tannhauser etchings are also an interpretation of what Coleridge described as ‘the contest between the two great moving Principles of social Humanity–religious adherence to the Past and the Ancient, the desire and the admiration of Permanence, on the one hand; and the Passion for increase of Knowledge, for Truth as the off spring of Reason, in short, the mighty instincts of Progression and Free-agency, on the other’ –each of which Coleridge thought necessary ‘to the continued existence of the other’. Lawrence believes that in art there are as many lessons to be learnt from tradition and history as from invention and innovation."

Jim McCue, The Times (London,1996)