You really are kindness personified, dearest friend! I do not deserve your leniency. That you continue to think of me faithfully and graciously shows you to me in an ever finer light. Many thanks! continue to be good to me, and perhaps you'll never regret it.
But I have the feeling that you can't really imagine the actual character of my troubles; it seems as if you were guessing sometimes too high, sometimes too low. First of all strike out every obstructed ambition; assume also that, when I perform my Tannhäuser here, it will take place only because I expect to get a truly inner satisfaction out of the accomplishment and the results of the performance. Nothing in the world, not even the most urgent consideration for my economic position, could bring me to see this through if I had to expose myself to the least disfigurement, or make any compromise whatsoever. This way I shall not be subjected to any conflict with myself.
But let me be silent about all this today. Enough that, since I left you in Brussels, I have been so depressed by worries that I—frankly speaking—could not give vent to my feelings, and that demonstrations of enthusiasm especially affected me with incredible bitterness. This has now cleared up a little, and I can at least occupy my mind again with cares of a nobler sort, as used to be the case. Still, you can easily imagine my situation if I must forgo all relaxation from without during the entire summer; and the Bois de Boulogne is my only refuge in nature during the few sunny hours which we have these days! But I'm just about to make momentary use of the favor of the King of Saxony—probably already known to you—by going to the Rhine for a few days in order to look up the Princess of Prussia in Coblenz, with whom I need to have a personal discussion in order to determine once and for all how far I can rely on this lady, that is, how far she is able to understand what this is about. At that time I shall also call for my wife in Soden. Altogether I can devote only five or six days to this.
Your visit to Liszt made me very happy: that was the way to do it! You describe him to me as everybody describes him. His grief—for whom is it intended? I feel he has really only one thing about which to grieve, and that is his intangible dependence on a woman who is doing him unbelievable harm. But nothing would betray the fact that he grieves about that; he is merely becoming embittered over the harm which that relationship causes him without wanting to admit the reason. Now we are all in trouble: we cannot help him, not even console him; our contacts must be kept almost superficial; we have to be diplomatic, and to pretend not to know this or that, etc. What can we do? I feel very much constrained toward him: I cannot be frank without hurting his feelings, and how easily he is offended these days.
I can't think of a visit to Germany until the second half of the winter: then I'll visit Liszt first. He surely may not and will not come to you in Brussels. My future is also quite unknown to me: Germany is open to me, but only now do I actually recognize that I really have no sanctuary for my art. Where?? That is the question which still remains completely unanswered.
You seem to have become stronger, for which I'm happy; in any case you have a good outlet for many a heartache—you can still interest yourself seriously and wholeheartedly in politics. I have not been able to do so for a long time: I have no more taste for the changing forms of world conditions, since I can no longer feel that the basic character of the world is at all affected by them; thus I lose a fascinating and—diverting interest, whereas perhaps I have the sole advantage of recognizing the character of the world in the apparently most insignificant individual happenings of life; and this all the more definitely as the essence of the world, in its greater expanses of time and space, often becomes indefinite and unrecognizable so that we think we're seeing realities where there is actually nothing but deceptive cloud formations.
But I don't want to argue with Papa; on the contrary, I send him my love through you. I am infinitely glad to see you again: you may believe that! And many thanks and a faithful return of your friendship
R. Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 223