Dear old Friend!
I wanted to include your letter with the package which I am to send by mail coach one of these days and which is to contain a number of letters besides the new manuscript for Wigand. I am beginning the day with letter writing, and I figure that I may well need three additional days for the rest of the letters and the continued study of my very voluminous manuscript. This would delay too much the dispatch of the letter, part of which I have much pondered during the last two weeks and which, once put on paper, I could not possibly keep. For that reason I am going to write to you separately and send the letter right away, by itself.
For the moment I shall refrain from expressing my joy in your last letter, in order to keep to my main subject, and that main subject just now is myself alone. For some time I have been looking for the one to turn to about the matter in question; as soon as I thought of you my search had ended. My choice is very definitely made. So listen, old true friend of my heart!
On my flight from Dresden and Saxony I arrived in Weimar; and the real catastrophe, so far as it concerned me alone, happened there—actually in Liszt's home. Liszt, who has always pointed out Paris to me, seized the moment to manage things in such a way that I had to go to Paris and make use of his numerous connections for the purpose of an opera commission, while he was to provide me with the necessary funds. So he offered me a credit up to 2,000 francs. I had little chance to ponder or choose, but accepted the plan, received the necessary traveling expenses from Liszt, and proceeded through Switzerland—for passport reasons—and so to France. Before this, I had arranged with Liszt the following on behalf of my wife: He was to use his influence with the Grand Duchess of Weimar, who was especially fond of me, to make me a year's allowance of 300 thaler, in return for which I was to agree to deliver all my finished and future dramatic works to the Weimar Theater without further honorarium, and to take charge of all corrections and alterations, and when circumstances permitted to take over the coaching gratis. At first, this income should be conveyed to my wife in Dresden. Only the haste of the moment induced me to adopt the Paris plan as my own: a week in Paris was enough to make clear to me the great mistake I had been pushed into. Spare me from expatiating here in more detail on the revolting baseness of Parisian art tendencies, especially in opera. In recent decades, under the mercenary influence of Meyerbeer, the condition of opera in Paris has become so ruinously horrible that it is useless for an honest man to devote himself to it. Liszt's secretary, Belloni, a very smart, locally experienced, and at the same time a very goodhearted man, has taken charge of the situation most successfully. He put me in touch with a poet, Gustave Vaez (now president of the Commission d'auteurs), who awaits from me the plan of an opera poem, so as to deliver to me at once the book which he will make acceptable to the management of the Grand Opera. But all the same I am firmly convinced that I shall never succeed in having an opera really performed at the Academy, at least not under present conditions, with its new ruling spirit and under the present regime. As things stand now, Meyerbeer holds everything in his hand, that is, in his moneybag; and the morass of intrigue to be traversed is so big that fellows far more cunning than myself have long since given up the idea of waging a battle in which only money is decisive.
Quite apart from this practical view, anyone who knows the nature of my soul as an artist may estimate how I feel when I consider composing to a modern French text. The present public of the Paris Grand Opera and a French opera book—these together are enough to ruin me, to whom music is everything, completely. It won't do, and I have no further words to waste on him who fails to understand this. Enough! Just now these and other disheartening impressions are sufficient to drive me away from Paris altogether. Glad to have freed myself of these scruples through my robust nature and refreshed by glorious Switzerland and a few sympathizing Zürich friends, I have taken new courage to live in my own way, according to my nature! I wrote to Liszt and only cautiously expressed my disgust with Paris, knowing his very biased point of view on this subject; I told him he should first see to it that I can exist at all; I certainly wouldn't let my works lapse, but I should want those who loved my works to leave to me and my good judgment the choice of what I am going to work at. I knew that besides the Grand Duchess of Weimar there is also the Duke of Coburg and especially the Princess of Prussia who are sympathetic to my art. Therefore I wrote to Liszt that if this is true, and if these people would prove that they are real princely humans (not only so-called human princes), they ought together to offer me a moderate salary sufficient to make me independent of the need for speculation. Well, there I was mistaken again; we enthusiastic commoners think much too generously of those in power; they are much better known to people who revere them unreservedly. Liszt is such a one, and he made no secret about it to me that as things stand now he doesn't consider it at all advisable to put in a bid for interest in me on the part of these same notables. It goes without saying that nobody was more ready to discourage such an attempt than myself as soon as I got the hint. Liszt alone—as I have also found out—is incapable of supporting me—he himself is in a perpetual pinch for money, increased by the fact that he must provide entirely for his beloved, Princess Wittgenstein. He is a truly admirable man with excellent qualities and he holds me in lively affection, but my real intrinsic nature as artist is unknown to him and must always remain alien to him; that lies in the nature of things. Well, for more than three months I have had to live on a few hundred gulden, which a friend here has had to do his utmost to advance. At the end of this month I shall not know where to turn for my existence, which would not be so fatal for me alone, but it is a terrible prospect for my wife, to whom I remain in many ways an unintelligible puzzle.
Let me pause here for the question: What are my real intentions? If my bare existence were assured, it would lie before me to do what I have to do—I have poured out my heart to the world, that is to say, to my friends, with my latest essay, The Art Work of the Future. From now on I shall be no longer a writer, but only an artist. If I am left undisturbed from without, I shall create work after work, for I am brimming with subjects and art plans. So long as the outward form of the world remains as it is now, these works can be only mute ones addressed to my friends; but when it changes its form, as it must, they will speak out and take their rightful stride. My Lohengrin is long since finished. My whole soul is eager to write at last the music for my Siegfried. Subjects for five operas are alive in my head: to bring them to light, one after another, is a necessity to me. I shall even keep an eye on Paris, but I can't line myself up with the conditions prevailing there now: only with what is bound to come, and in a not too distant future. I am working right now on a plan for Paris; it is Jesus of Nazareth. First I shall try to win over my French poet to the subject, in the hope that we may agree on it and be ready with it when the time comes. Only by looking at things this way can I remain an artist and work as one; otherwise, I should have to stop. What matters most to me is to gain time, and that means to win life. Unhappily, I am no artisan to earn my daily bread; it must be offered to me as things stand now, so that I may remain an artist. Who is to do this? Only those who love me—me, my works, my strivings and aims as an artist, and love them sufficiently so that it matters to them to preserve me for my art and for my artistic endeavors. There are not many of them, but those few in this case have the peculiar feature of loving me energetically. I have had some fine and comforting experiences of this in the course of time. There are not many of them and they are scattered, but they are friends of my true self. The most natural thing in my position would be to turn to these friends openly and before the whole world; to lay my case and my aims before them without reserve, and to call upon them to join in helping me as much as they can in order to bridge over this period of my life. In my present circumstances I am unable to help myself. They should see in me not a person in need of help, but an artist and an art trend which they want to preserve for the future and not allow to perish. The works which I am eager to create will be their property until they can be handed over to the people for whom they have been preserved. Even if I were mocked and ridiculed for this by all the people in the world, I wouldn't mind if I only knew that my friends at least understood me. If I were entirely alone, I would take this step quite publicly; but I can't do it on account of my wife, for she wouldn't understand me and would listen only to the baying of the pack. So I must look for someone who—without publicity—will stand up for me here and will undertake to achieve quietly, in a roundabout way, what I might have done publicly with a single stroke. To find this someone was the point. I believed I had to select the most influential one of my friends, and I rejoice in having surely succeeded in choosing the one who I know has done more for me than any other.
And so I ask you now, my dear friend, to take care of me and my art! Without wishing to encroach, I want to tell you how I consider you should act according to these circumstances. You might perhaps begin by inviting one or two who are friendly toward me to join you in a kind of committee—you will know best whom to choose; perhaps Löwe would be quite unfit. (By the way, I would like to mention the Ritter family about whom Uhlig will tell you more, perhaps also introducing you, for they have behaved well toward my lonely wife—quite of their own accord and without even knowing her; perhaps this family could give you some hints where you could find friends of my art, not yet known to you.) You would have to initiate the greatest possible number of intimate and congenial people into your plan, which of course will have been officially started by you alone, and to induce them to collaborate; perhaps some discreet circular could be issued for that purpose. For the sake of appearance, Liszt in Weimar would have to be invited, as well as Frommann in Berlin (behind the Catholic Church No. 2), to be helpful in a discreet way, in your enterprise. The aim would be quite simple—to collect as large a sum as possible, which would be given to my wife so that she can attend without worry to what is needed for our life, so that I may be left to my work! How you would then want to dispose of my work would be up to you. Enough! In making all these suggestions I am guided only by consideration for my wife: she should not and must not know that I brought up the subject—even though only in a confidential communication to you; she does not understand what is the essential point for me in this affair, and would only yield to a feeling of shame which in this matter I cannot feel. But it would be entirely different if she were told that an association of friends had come together spontaneously, which would help me as long as possible, and according to their ability, over the present reverses of my life, would endeavor to keep me in undisturbed activity for my art—that should have a quite different effect on her. Since I have to avoid publicity also for this reason, you would have to help by interesting only favorably inclined people and furthering the project by spreading it from one friend to another. The first one you approach may already have heard that the undertaking originated with you, and I really believe that it is only the loquacity of this letter which has given you a different role; for I know that the first part, the detailed description of my circumstances, need only have been told you, and you would have been able to write the second part quite alone and out of your sympathetic and solicitous heart.
So forgive me! I am afraid I have spoken more than enough about myself. But even as I begin to speak of you and Wilhelm, I'm still in the picture. The day after I sent you my last letter, I received one from Wilm in New York containing among other things, an invitation to send him my operas as soon as possible so that he can best arouse interest in them and in me. America now and at all times can have only a money interest for me. If the conditions here continue until I no longer have the air to breathe, I would certainly look to America, but only for job work—with a baton in my hand—a profession which at least would yield better earnings there than here. I have no children. This is the difference between you and me. As the father of a family, you will start a new and endlessly long life in the New World. Mine would be completely extinguished there at my death; so you have a future there, I none; my art alone must be to me what your family is to you. You with your family are an entity wherever you are; I without my art would be a miserable egotist who would have only his stomach left to care for, not a future. So now I beg you to send my operas to Wilhelm. The scores are in the attic of my old flat in Friedrichstadt—Professor Hähnel's wife will let you take them if you ask in my name. The piano scores would have to be got from Meser. I am no longer in touch with him, nor have I the rights over a single note in my operas. Therefore go to see him. He could even send them to New York as a music seller if this is only made known to Wilm so that he may have them bought there by God knows whom. You would probably have to prepay the postage as far as Havre. If this bothers you as much as I think it will, leave it until you go over yourself and take it with you. I don't know any other way.
Much as I enjoyed Wilm's letter, what really enchanted me was the news I had of him through you. This really goes beyond all wishes! But I was almost less delighted about Wilhelm than I was about you old people, and to hear that you have lived to see such joy! To go on living into the future through your real flesh and blood is something very different from living on by script and notes: all hopes which tend toward a long life in art are actually based on the unproductive sterility of mankind. If men were as they ought to be, a work of art would bloom today and die tomorrow, while a new one would meanwhile appear in full and fresh bloom. But real bodily perpetuation is indeed something more beautiful. Its existence depends upon the fullest love; our loveless culture has had to manage with all sorts of immortalities which are of little worth, and this also applies to what is called Art. I would give up a hundred thousand years of art-immortality for a single year of true, actual, human living. You happy man!
I am writing Wilm this week; if you hear from him meanwhile, let me know. I can't get used to the idea that you want to go to America so soon. I simply can't grasp it; my heart refuses to believe it! The Heines are going to America!! Perhaps the autumn mists here are the reason that I no longer see things so clearly; perhaps, too, I am overworked. I am very low in spirits and many times bad thoughts overtake me—bad or good—but those thoughts point to an early death, which often doesn't seem too terrible to me. I feel so useless, so boundlessly superfluous—as lonely people do—and I often feel very lonesome, especially when I think that the Heines will soon go to America!
Many thanks, too, for your fine letter! You have no idea how delighted I am to see your handwriting, and I am happy also that you seem to like writing me. Write soon again and don't be angry if I close now. I would like to say much more about you, but now I can't do it. Farewell, farewell, my good, old true friend! Kind greetings to your wife and child, also from Minna, who on the whole is not doing so well.
Soon more from your
Richard W.
I am providing for you an opportunity to read my new essay before it is sent to Wigand: it has grown voluminous. It's the latest I have to say about the subject which I myself plan to tackle again as soon as it ripens within me.
What more have I to tell you? Much, but I don't quite have it in my head yet! Greetings to Fischer, whom I shall write tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 82