Dear Friend,
I have this minute received your letter, and have put my work aside in order to reply to you at once and thus carry out an intention I have postponed for a year. A letter to you has burdened my conscience for long, and I can hardly understand why it has been so long unwritten; most probably the mood of the moment never set in the direction of writing, for on my lonely walks I have often written to you in my thoughts. But I have developed into a thorough-going pedant, and I am a prey to a sort of brooding, which makes all expansion impossible, and from which I seek refuge in work. But I won't waste time on excuses of this nature.
I have been comforted lately by news of my wife's visit to you, and by the accounts she sends me of you. From her report it seems to me that any anxiety on your account was indeed uncalled for. Don't take me up wrongly. Your father, too, who came to see me here, put me in quite good spirits about you. In his clear, sensible, definite way, he gave such a quaintly reassuring account of you, that, I confess, we several times laughed heartily over it. The consequence of which is, that there is not much left to me to write to you about but myself, and in dealing with this subject there are various hindrances.
But to come to the point — and in the first instance as regards outward circumstances — I continue to lead a life of the utmost seclusion, absolutely and entirely given up to my great work, the composition of my Nibelung dramas. In Germany my operas are steadily making their way; but it is still a slow business. Tannhäuser is given more or less everywhere except in Berlin, Brunswick, Vienna, Munich, Stuttgart, and the smaller theatres of Bavaria and Austria; in Prague and Gratz, however, it is given. Lohengrin follows suit, and is in high favour in the Rhine provinces and in Breslau; and in certain places the Flying Dutchman is being given. As regards the performances, I am quite convinced that they are poor, and that they would only distress me if I were to be present at them. I am particularly concerned about Lohengrin, performed as it is without my having been able to show what I meant, by first putting it on the stage myself. The report that reached you as to its being given in Paris was certainly a canard. I have heard nothing of it, and even were it on the cards I should most probably forbid it. On the other hand, something quite new has turned up. The old Philharmonic Society in London has asked me to conduct their concerts this season. When their invitation reached me, I felt as if I had dropped from the clouds. I had never troubled myself the least in the world about London, and had calmly accepted the fact last year that at these very concerts my Tannhäuser overture was not only massacred, but actually hissed. As I hesitated about accepting their invitation, they went so far as to send one of their directors to Zurich to secure me. At length I consented, as I felt that it was a case of repudiating, once and for all, any further connection with the Art public, or of accepting the hand they stretched out to me. The pay is not large, and as I do not contemplate any private speculation, I am merely going out of curiosity, in order to see what the people in London are about. If I had any ulterior design, it would be to get together, at some future date in London, a first-rate company in order to give all my operas, and more especially Lohengrin. Well, the event will prove!
I start at the end of this month. The first concert is on the 12th of March, the last on the 25th of June. I expect to be back in the beginning of July on the Seelisberg, by the Lake of Lucerne, my favourite spot in Switzerland. There I shall recover from the worries of London, and hope to compose my Young Siegfried. I have finished the composition of the Walküre, amid much anguish of spirit, of which no one knows anything, least of all my excellent wife. Peace to the subject! I will complete the instrumentation in London; up to now I have only commenced it.
I only finished the fair copy of Rheingold last autumn. I at once sent the score to Dresden to have it copied by my old copyist there. Liszt, however, urged me so strongly and persistently to allow him to see the original, that I was obliged to interrupt the copying in order to let him do so. Liszt has only now returned the score to Dresden; as soon as the copy is ready, either it or the original shall be sent to you provisionally. The upshot of all will no doubt be that you will improve (?) the whole thing out of existence. So much the better. I shall be delighted to see some specimens of your music. Possibly you will succeed better than I have done.
But now to deeper subjects. I do not mean to philosophize with you to-day, but shall let another do so in my stead. I have just sent an order to Leipzig to forward you a copy of Arthur Schopenhauer's book, The World as Will and Idea.
I hope you will be allowed to read this book, as there is nothing in it that has any objectionable bearing on your position. As you will get to know the book for yourself, I need tell you nothing about it, but I will give you some account of its author. Schopenhauer is at present 62 years old; he lives and has been for some time past in complete retirement at Frankfort. Briefly, this has been his career. His chief work appeared as early as 1819; and in 1844 he published a fuller edition of it, with an extra volume. He took up his position as the direct heir of Kant, and this simultaneously with Hegel's appearance on the scene. Schopenhauer's philosophy, which completely demolishes the nonsense and charlatanism of the Fichte-Schelling-Hegel view, was absolutely ignored for forty years by the professors of philosophy, and this of purpose and intention. No one knew anything of him. At long last he was discovered by an English critic, and introduced to the world in a long article in the Westminster Review. This writer expresses his astonishment that a mind of Schopenhauer's eminence should have remained unnoticed for nearly half a century, though, naturally enough, he recognises that the philosophy was of a kind which forced these professors to seal up Schopenhauer hermetically, and shut him off from the world at large, unless they meant to cut away the ground from under their own feet. The said article was translated into a Berlin paper, since when it has been impossible to ignore Schopenhauer, and now the miserable impotence of German philosophy since Kant has been laid bare and openly declared. The importance of the book is incalculable, but in a sense that will be far from satisfactory to many. For myself, I confess my experience of life had brought me to a point when only Schopenhauer's philosophy could wholly satisfy me and exercise a decisive influence on my whole life.
In accepting unreservedly the profound truths of his teaching I was able to follow my own inner bent, and although he has given my line of thought a direction somewhat different from its previous one, yet only this direction harmonized with the profoundly sorrowful conception I had already formed of the world.
I am sure that the book will have a great and decisive influence on you; it may even be that you will find in it, should you require it, the unique consolation of which strong spirits more than others stand in need. I will say nothing further to you on the subject, but I feel that from henceforth we have a new and sublime interest in common on which we may exchange our ideas. In reading Schopenhauer I thought of you constantly, and it is with a feeling at once deep and solemn that I send you this work, which at a critical moment of my own inner life gave me courage to endure and strength to renounce. Do read it; I can confer no greater benefit on you. When you have finished it, write to me, and we can then discuss it. Address your letter to London, care of Ferdinand Praeger, 31 Milton St., Dorset Square. Your father, who has been most kind to me, recommended me to Praeger: I shall lodge with him on arrival. I shall anxiously await your next letter. For to-day you must be satisfied with these few pages. As regards outward events I have nothing to tell, and for the things of the spirit I send you Schopenhauer. From London I shall write often and fully.
Farewell, dearest friend. Trust ever in me and in my affection. Kindest regards from my wife.
Your
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to August Roeckel, trans. Eleanor C. Sellar, with an introductory essay by Houston Stewart Chamberlain (J. W. Arrowsmith, 1897), No. 5