Wagner wrote of his preoccupations with Schopenhauer and "Tristan" in a letter to Franz Liszt (December 16, 1854): Never in my life having enjoyed the true happiness of love I shall erect a memorial to this loveliest of all dreams in which, from the first to the last, love shall, for once, find utter repletion. I have devised in my mind a "Tristan und Isolde", the simplest, yet most full-blooded musical conception imaginable, and with the ‘black flag’ that waves at the end I shall cover myself over – to die.