Dearest Kietz! It is not so easy to answer your letter. To do it right, where should one begin, and where end—
During the winter of last year I dictated my biography; my first stay in Paris afforded many agreeable details about you.
And now how am I to begin to set you straight about me, you who have nothing in mind but "success" and similar pleasant things and who—as it seems—judge my life as it appears according to the newspapers!
Perhaps it might be best to give you short and dry answers on several points. Well, then!
Nobody has gossiped with me about you: I know absolutely nothing about P. Chandon, and have no champagne of his either. Further: whether they will give Lohengrin (not green!) in Paris or not has absolutely nothing to do with my change of residence. Even if they perform Lohengrin there (which I do not even yet believe), I will not go there in any case, and you will have to wait patiently for a long time for me to come through Epernay.
All in all, what you manage to say about me is all wrong. You see it is quite different from what you think. How things are—well! That is not so easy to say, and if I wanted to tell you about that, I would only confuse you more. In any case I live a strange, difficult-difficult life; battling against it and only by applying with the utmost energy have I now created after many years a new opus which is called Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. It will be performed for the first time in Munich about the end of April; it will probably have much success and will spread very quickly in Germany.
And now I am looking for the enjoyment of a real retreat in complete retirement from all society: it is situated here among the mountains, and I owe it to the great and romantic though rather agitating love of the young King of Bavaria for me. If I am permitted the good fortune of undisturbed rest, which is all I look for, then, always working hard—I could hope to finish the works I have planned.
I have nothing at all against you, my dear fellow, except what you have against yourself. Our last time together in Paris was—in spite of all the excitement—time lost, a lazy time in which nothing was created and in which nothing gave me pleasure, not even—you. Forgive me!
I shall soon go to Munich for rehearsals. In the summer I shall be here again, where—at half an hour's distance from the city—I live in a solitary house with various cattle and some servants. Should you care to visit me one day, then come! You will always be well received.
I cannot tell you any more. Now try to explain the rest to yourself and—remain fond of your
old ami
Richard W.
Tomorrow Herm. Müller will come to visit me from Zürich. I shall see him again for the first time in nine years. From that you may conclude my sociable inclinations!
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 293