Most wonderful Fellow!
Many thanks for your sympathy and friendship! But what's the idea of thinking that I've taken offense at you? My silence I can best explain by telling you briefly my recent life history. Your next-to-last letter reached me while I was completing the Walküre, No. 1 of the Nibelung dramas: I should have taken eight weeks for this work; instead I did it in four weeks, without any interruptions, in bad weather, and in general under depressing circumstances. But it is to the uninterrupted work especially that I ascribe the fact that I felt so badly afterward. When our friend Lindemann looks for the present main source of my illness in the cerebral nerves, he thereby proves to me again how correctly he diagnoses my condition; up there I now feel so strongly affected that I could no longer have room for any doubt. My illness then is of transcendental nature, and all other medical measures can have no decisive effect if I'm not cured up there. From my brain the affection spread to my entire nervous system and manifested itself in complete exhaustion with fever symptoms. Here I felt that only the greatest quiet could help me: but I found in my surroundings only a fresh stimulus to agitation and excitability; barely had I begun to recover when—toward mid-July—I went on a trip. Strange what endurance I showed here; in fourteen days I roamed through the Bernese Oberland, climbed two high peaks, crossed a glacier down into Italy, and matched every Alpine guide in energy. Only my brain would not recover; I always remained excited and restless; lack of company became particularly unbearable for me. Herwegh did not meet me; after I had visited Lago Maggiore and arrived in Lugano I finally had my wife join me just to have a human being with me. With Minna I then went to Wallis and Chamonix (Mont Blanc) by way of the Simplon and finally back through Geneva: I had to admit to myself, after all, that the impact of this trip had not reached the main source of my illness. Every mental occupation was so difficult for me that as far as possible I even had to refrain from writing letters: I had taken your letter along on the trip in order to answer it from there; but this was impossible for me. Back in Zürich I found the wonderful news about Tannhäuser; a considerable number of theaters asked for this opera, and I was especially surprised about the King in Berlin. After I decided to let them have the opera, I became concerned about doing something which could take the place of my personal presence at the performances; I wrote a guide to the performance of Tannhäuser, had it printed, and am now sending it to the theaters. (You, too, will receive a copy.) The haste and speed with which all this had to be done, but above all the torture of this entire eternal "mental" communication by pen and ink, again affected my cerebral nerves so strongly that I lapsed into a condition similar to the one after the Walküre, and I still am in this condition as I write to you today. Feverish excitement and exhaustion, sickeningly uneasy numbness of the brain, melancholy, fear of all work; I am often so tired that I can walk only very slowly; then again a little better, but with the tendency toward excitability.
That I cannot get well again, in the sense that you imagine it, is as clear as day: I'm mentally ill—and mental illness is incurable. The particular life I lead condemns me to eternal "theory," even though I fully realize the necessity for a strong sensual existence. The world has escaped my heart; I loathe it; I cannot love it: this way it is no longer an object of sentiment for me, but only of fantasy; only through the activity of my brain can I communicate with it. I'm too genuine to be able to lie to myself; too experienced to be ignorant. Thus, extremely sensitive as I am, I can only feel sadness: my theoretical contacts with the world cannot bring me any happy emotions. Under "theory" I also include here all my artistic creativeness, because I cannot produce a real work of art with only artistic means at my disposal. It would not help matters at all if, for example, I were now in Berlin myself: the torture of the incompleteness and inadequacy of the practical experiment would be at least as great as the torture of abstaining from all experiments. I'm bound to go to pieces in this present-day world of ours. I know this and have already completely reconciled myself to it: therefore it is for me no longer a question of recovering, but only of making the period of my existence bearable, and I can do this only through artistic creation, since this is the only illusion which is effective with me. I therefore desire from our Lindemann not cure, but merely palliatives to make my existence as artist possible as long as this existence can be maintained at all. The six months' walking tour I cannot consider: I'm too old and not light-hearted enough to divert myself with the trivial exterior of our country and city sights; I can no longer be purposeless and have no other purpose than my abstract health. On the other hand, I'm thinking of making it possible to buy a small piece of land with garden and livestock on Lake Zürich; if it works out I expect a great deal from the care of a small property, especially of animals. Now and then excursions, mountain climbing—even a trip to Paris. Otherwise the prescribed treatment agrees quite well with me: especially the night bath at 22 degrees, which usually gives me a restful night. I cannot take the morning bath below 18 degrees; but if I feel ill as I do now, I take the night bath at 24 degrees and the morning bath at 21-22, because if it is any colder it increases the feverish excitability of the nerves. Above all, I will now remember always to interrupt myself during my work when I notice that it affects me too strongly: then I'll immediately go into the Alps for a few days. What does Lindemann think of that? Shall I make changes in the baths? You see, I've lost myself completely in a letter to Lindemann: report this to him, and tell him I apologize for not having made a special copy of this letter for him!
I'll have to come to the end, for I've already written more than I can stand. The matter of the portrait is a real mess! Härtels are ridiculously cautious: they're publishing a series of portraits of "famous Germans" in quite excellent copperplate prints; they only want to accept something really good, and so they first would like to see with their own eyes what you can do before they arrange a definite commission. I did not even want to tell you this. But if you are not sensitive, I'd advise you to make the drawing of my mug and to send it to them for inspection: if they like the portrait you can be sure that they'll pay you well for it, for these people are really not stingy. But should they still have objections, I'd advise to have it lithographed at my expense and then give it to an art dealer to be sold: the success would be good in any case and profitable for you; for—and this is the reason which brings me to the matter of the portrait—even now I cannot prevent miserable stuff (third- and fourth-hand imitations of your old portrait of me) from being sold in great quantity. My "fame" is growing, and especially my absence ("banishment") from Germany makes me interesting to many people: speculators will presumably have all copies copied again and will sell my mug for my face; in order to prevent that, I should like you to proceed quickly with what I have told you.
If I can possibly do it I'll come to Paris with my wife next winter, especially also to meet Lindemann. Then you'd have to "paint" me and then we'd have to have a good copperplate print done from it. I can now appreciate how valuable a good portrait can become to others, for example, in a fine picture of Schiller (after Müller) which now hangs in my room.
Unfortunately, I can add nothing more about you, except that I'm making plans for you: if I come to Paris you can be sure that I'll take you away from there—namely, to Switzerland—and I'll hold you here in my house as long as you like it. But even if I don't come to Paris this winter, I'll still manage to have my way and to have you accompany me on a real tour of the Alps, as far as Italy, next summer. What I can and will earn is as yet very uncertain: in view of my debts I should actually not earn anything; but I'll manage to get enough to have you here once; you'll also find a chance to earn money here.
Goodbye for today! Assume that what I have left unanswered is impossible for me to answer today. But spare me any theory: it frightens me when you, too, start that, because I'll then have no one who talks plainly. Minna sends you her kindest regards; she pricks up her ears when Paris is mentioned. Goodbye, many thanks for your letters, write soon again, remember me to Lindemann, and give him my apologies.
Your
R. W.
Don't think that Fétis père, etc., offended me; I wanted to read his stuff, but my patience soon gave out. Who in Paris—where no one knows me—could be expected to read stuff like that! How impractical of Meyerbeer!!
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 123