My dear, precious Wife!
At last I have a peaceful moment for conversing with you in writing, just as I almost always do alone with my thoughts, in spoken but unheard words. My four days of traveling to this point, in great heat and after the highest excitement, with only one night's sleep (in Coburg), have fatigued me greatly; my blood is terribly agitated, as if about to rush out of my ears; if I had gone on traveling another day without a break, I fear I might have had a stroke. So I am treating myself to a little rest here in Zürich, with the relief which comes from the feeling of reassurance. Besides this, my stay here may facilitate my further journey: for Alexander Müller from Würzburg, an old friend of my youth, has been settled here for many years; he is still in the country today but tomorrow he is to return, and I hope that he will be able to procure me a passport for France just as readily as Wolff's friend in Geneva could. If my hope is realized, which I have hardly any reason to doubt, I would save myself the great detour by Geneva and could go directly to Paris by way of Basel. This would be desirable in every respect, for I am especially afraid of the great fatigue I should have to undergo in that longer trip via Geneva. So I'll not close this letter until tomorrow, when I can tell you definitely about my shortened itinerary.
My journey until now has been without adventure, but was much delayed by between stops. You know I left Jena on Thursday night, but unfortunately there was no direct express coach; and in Rudolstadt and Saalfeld I had to wait so long for mail coaches coming from somewhere else that I didn't arrive until Friday night in Coburg, and from there the coach to Bavaria didn't go on until Saturday morning. Sunday night to Monday brought me to Lindau on the Bodensee, the last German town, where the passports were demanded at the gate. I gave mine up and went to the inn, where I wanted to sleep until four o'clock in the morning, but I couldn't, owing partly to my overwrought state and partly to anxiety that some bad calamity might still arise from the passport affair. I felt just as you did during the second night in Magdala. I imagined that at any moment I would hear the inspector of police coming to cross-examine me. It was foolish, but I even practiced speaking in Swabian dialect in order to pass as a Stuttgarter. I was at last released from those painfully comic attempts when at daybreak the police clerk arrived and handed me back my passport with visa for Switzerland—without any trouble. When he had left, I thanked God and cried aloud repeatedly, "My dear Mienel, now I am safe." So I boarded the steamer in a pretty good mood; how refreshed I felt by the glorious trip across the Bodensee, with the view of the snow-white Alpine glaciers!
From Rorschach, the first Swiss town, the express coach took me straight on to Zürich, and things I had to attend to left hardly enough time to write the few lines you will get through Avenarius. I arrived here last night, after a charming trip through St. Gallen and Winterthur, and put up in an inn on Lake Zürich. O my good Minna, I hardly dare tell you how heavenly it is here: it would be like a bitter mockery of your harassed situation if I should tell you about the unimaginable beauties of this glorious country. The greatest prosperity and the sublime beauty of nature suddenly lie here before me as if by magic: each time I yielded to my delight I had to exclaim your name as if asking you to share it, but then I remembered your serious look and the dreary cares with which I left you, my poor wife. So, while I am here enjoying my newly won freedom, you are involved in the adverse conditions my wildness has brought about. The whole painful pressure of a disastrous situation is weighing on your martyred soul, while I am already renewing my strength to step courageously into the future. May God strengthen you in the last (I hope last) miserable job which you undertook in order to take care of me. But all I implore from you now is this: shorten your disagreeable job as much as possible; what cannot be solved must be severed, only to escape from that unhappy Dresden as soon as possible and to breathe a different and more wholesome air. Go next to Leipzig, then immediately to Teplitz, or better still go now at once to Teplitz. Clärchen surely will accompany you, perhaps Cäcilie too. Only when I know that you are in Teplitz shall I be able to sigh with relief, for every additional day you spend in Dresden weighs heavily on my conscience.
Yes, dear wife, the trip by way of Geneva through the whole of Switzerland is very enticing: but for that very reason I will try not to go that way, because I don't want to have any occasion for enjoyment while I know of your distress. I will do it like my Tannhäuser: "Verschloss'nen Aug's, ihr Wunder nicht zu schauen, durchzog ich blind Italiens holde Auen!" I have before me only one goal: Paris, and no other desire lives in me than to let not a single day pass by without incessant energy and work toward the realization of your future and mine. I must open for myself a free, independent career and so bring my talents, without any further hindrance, to the utmost effectiveness. If I succeed, you will be pleased with me too, for always: liberty makes me fresh and vigorous, but when I am confined, or even in public service, I shall always be to you an unbearable fellow who would bore and pester you and himself as well.
Wednesday morning [May 30]: Yesterday my friend Müller came back to town: we met again for the first time in sixteen years and enjoyed each other's company. We began by discussing my passport situation, and he assured me that if he and his friends don't succeed in getting for me the wanted passport nobody else in Switzerland will. For I find that here in Zürich the whole musical world and the public hold me in the highest esteem: Rienzi and the Dutchman have been played almost complete in concerts, and with the most extraordinary success. Now the public is about to be initiated to Tannhäuser in the same way, for the quality of the theater is inadequate. At Müller's I found all the piano scores of my operas; in the evening I met a number of my most enthusiastic admirers; first, the two town clerks who will take care of my passport have both sung in Rienzi and the Dutchman. I sincerely appreciated this clear proof of the popularity of my works and the great interest shown in them even in most distant places: only the German theaters . . . !! Oh, let's speak of something else! Well, today I hope to get a passport, and tomorrow I start out again on my journey, to go straight on without stop, via Basel to Paris.
For Paris I have already made a plan for an opera which one day shall be given in all languages and which—so I believe—shall put the theater in quite a new position. Whatever battles and conquests it may involve, I have something in my mind which must succeed and can succeed from Paris only—my strength is exerted to the utmost and I am almost grateful to the fate that it is driving me anew into the great arena, for now I feel strong and fully matured to accomplish the most decisive work of my life. I can't go further into the subject now, but I have already arranged my plan in detail and considered every means to put it through into performance—it must succeed, and—it will succeed, for now I have help on all sides, whereas formerly I was alone and unknown. And now? Do you believe that I could so take courage and build up this hope unless a sincere thought of love led me on? You know that, although I love freedom from restraint above all else, I am not in the least inclined merely to roam around the wide world; I must always know a home of my own, and this home for me, my dear wife, is you alone. Where my love is, there is my home, and in the last days of our painful parting one thing became convincingly clear to us again—that we really and truly love each other! Indeed, my Minna, when all our arguments are over, you too must feel after all that you wouldn't quarrel with me unless you tenderly cared for me. The only difference I can discern between now and the past is that now I know more surely that I love you. So receive with courage every new test of our love: it can only become ever more pure and deep. Hold the philistines and lackeys ever resolutely at a distance, and don't accept their pity. The weak ones and those who are dead deserve pity, not the strong and those who live! Above all, keep your health! As long as you are well, my home blooms and prospers, and all my efforts strive toward the goal of being permitted to return to this home as a successful artist—this will not be Dresden, not Saxony—but the little house where you will dwell with parents, sister, bird, and dog, and to which my fondest longing and my most restless striving will always seek to return.
O God, how much I could write you! I am with you every hour and keep talking to you! All my plans may still seem vague and indefinite to you; I shall not be able to report on them in more detail until I am in the course of carrying them out. I hate to speak to you about Dresden: why should I spoil my conversation with you by bringing in those annoying and deeply distressing subjects? My world is not the past but the future, and my whole endeavor is to enjoy the future with you as much as possible in the present. Another favor, dear wife, while you are still in Dresden! Wrap up a score and a libretto of Tannhäuser and send it to Herr Mühling, Director of the National Theater in Frankfort am Main—I'll write to him; you won't need to write anything more. Did you send the package to Liszt? But my more urgent request is that you write me a letter to Paris, so that I'll find it when I get there. My address is to be: To Monsieur Belloni, 36 rue des Martyrs, Paris. My first visit will be to him: Oh, if I could find a letter from you there! It occurred to me in Coburg to write a letter to Tichatschek in Berlin: I asked him, in case Rienzi had been performed there, to draw the royalties for me and to send them on, because (as you know) a few necessary purchases must be made, and I don't want to become too heavy a burden to Liszt at once. I should also very much like to know exactly how you, my poor wife, are getting along with your money: be sure to write me when you are afraid it may run short, so that you at least will not be compelled to borrow from anybody. I confidently hope that my Weimar contract will soon be concluded, and then you will be supported honorably by your husband's earnings; but if you run short before that, I'll send you at once what you need. Be sure not to forget about sending the score and the book to Frankfort. Now a couple of hasty parting words. My passport for France, valid for a year, with a full description of me, has just been visaed. I have quickly made a number of friends here who are keenly solicitous about me: I had to promise them to come here with my wife for a longer time, and that is the only way I could make them let me go today. I am to leave tonight at seven o'clock and with God's help, in a few days I'll be in Paris, from which you will promptly get another letter from me. Well, my dear beloved, good wife! A thousand kisses go with these lines! Be confident! Have courage and pride! Think of me only as being noble! Now I am on the right track, and it will soon lead me to you again! Greet all the faithful ones cordially from me. Farewell, farewell!
Your
Richard
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 73