Your letter, my dearest friend, far from rousing a combative spirit in me, has only confirmed me in the belief that in this world nothing is gained by discussion. That in us which is essentially and fundamentally our own is not our conceptions (Begriff) but our intuitions (Anschauung). These, however, are so inalienable a part of our being, that we can never wholly express them, never adequately communicate them; for even the most complete attempt in this direction — the achievement of the artist, the work of Art — is apprehended by others purely in accordance with their own intuitions. How can an artist expect that what he has felt intuitively should be perfectly realized by others, seeing that he himself feels in the presence of his work, if it is true Art, that he is confronted by a riddle, about which he too might have illusions, just as another might? Now, would you suppose it possible for an artist to be helped to a clear understanding of his own work by an intelligence other than his own? As to this, I am in a position to speak, as on this very point I have had the strangest experiences. Seldom has there taken place in the soul of one and the same man so profound a division and estrangement between the intuitive or impulsive part of his nature and his consciously or reasonably formed ideas. For I must confess to having arrived at a clear understanding of my own works of Art through the help of another, who has provided me with the reasoned conceptions corresponding to my intuitive principles.
The period during which I have worked in obedience to my intuitions dates from The Flying Dutchman. Tannhäuser and Lohengrin followed, and if there is any expression of an underlying poetic motive in these works, it is to be sought in the sublime tragedy of renunciation, the negation of the will, which here appears as necessary and inevitable, and alone capable of working redemption. It was this deep underlying idea that gave to my poetry and my music that peculiar consecration, without which they would not have had that power to move profoundly which they have. Now, the strange thing is, that in all my intellectual ideas on life, and in all the conceptions at which I had arrived in the course of my struggles to understand the world with my conscious reason, I was working in direct opposition to the intuitive ideas expressed in these works. While, as an artist, I felt with such convincing certainty that all my creations took their colouring from my feelings, as a philosopher I sought to discover a totally opposed interpretation of the world; and this interpretation once discovered, I obstinately held to it, though, to my own surprise, I found that it had invariably to go to the wall when confronted by my spontaneous and purely objective artistic intuitions. I made my most remarkable discovery in this respect with my Nibelung drama. It had taken form at a time when, with my ideas, I had built up an optimistic world, on Hellenic principles; believing that in order to realize such a world, it was only necessary for man to wish it. I ingeniously set aside the problem, why they did not wish it. I remember that it was with this definite creative purpose that I conceived the personality of Siegfried, with the intention of representing an existence free from pain. But I meant in the presentment of the whole Nibelung myth to express my meaning even more clearly, by showing how from the first wrong-doing a whole world of evil arose, and consequently fell to pieces in order to teach us the lesson, that we must recognise evil and tear it up by the roots, and raise in its stead a righteous world. I was scarcely aware that in the working out, nay, in the first elaboration of my scheme, I was being unconsciously guided by a wholly different, infinitely more profound intuition, and that instead of conceiving a phase in the development of the world, I had grasped the very essence and meaning of the world itself in all its possible phases, and had realized its nothingness; the consequence of which was, that as I was true to my living intuitions and not to my abstract ideas in my completed work, something quite different saw the light from what I had originally intended. But I remember that once, towards the end, I decided to bring out my original purpose, cost what it might, namely, in Brünnhilde's final somewhat artificially coloured invocation to those around her, in which, having pointed out the evils of possession, she declares that in love alone is blessedness to be found, without (unfortunately) making quite clear what the nature of that Love is, which in the development of the myth we find playing the part of destructive genius.
To this extent was I led astray in this one passage by the interposition of my intellectual intention. Strangely enough, I was always in despair over this said passage, and it required the complete subversion of my intellectual conceptions, brought about by Schopenhauer, to discover to me the reason of my dissatisfaction, and to supply me with the only adequate key-stone to my poem in keeping with the whole idea of the drama, which consists in a simple and sincere recognition of the true relations of things and complete abstinence from the attempt to preach any particular doctrine.
My reason for imparting to you this mental process, which cannot be considered devoid of interest, is to make my own position clear to you. Once this problem of the difference between intellectual conceptions (Begriff) and intuitions (Anschauung) had been solved for me by Schopenhauer's profound and inspired penetration, I ceased to think of it as a mere abstract idea, for I realised it as a truth, which was borne in on me with such convincing force that, having fully recognized its nature, I was satisfied to accept it for myself, without committing myself to the presumptuous mistake of attempting to force it on others by means of dialectic. I am profoundly conscious myself that I should never have been convinced by such means, unless my own deepest intuitions had been satisfied; and therefore I see that if the truth of which I have spoken is to be brought home to any one, he must have felt it intuitively before he can grasp it intellectually.
We can form no abstract conception of a thing unless we have previously grasped it as a living intuition; if a man realizes that clearly, especially if he feels himself as little of a philosopher as I do, he will not have much inclination to pose as a dialectician. My only language is Art. Nevertheless, I ask you, in order to sum up the whole matter, can you conceive of a moral action of which the root idea is not renunciation? And what is the most ideal holiness, namely, full and perfect redemption, if it is not the recognition of this truth, as the basis of all our action?
But even with these simple questions I go too far, and become more abstract than is advantageous to myself. Therefore let me tell you a few more things about my concrete personality.
I am an Artist, nothing else, and that is at once my blessing and my curse; otherwise I should have wished to have been a saint and to have ordered my life in the simplest way. As it is, fool that I am, I strive and struggle to achieve rest, by which I mean the completed rest of an undisturbed, tolerably comfortable life, in order that I may have nothing to do but to work and to be an artist.
To attain this is so difficult, that in my constant pursuit of rest I am often obliged to laugh at myself. Since last I wrote to you I have been pretty wretched. The London expedition was a foolish inconsistency on my part, for which I have patiently submitted to punishment, even to the extent of remaining to the end of my engagement. While there, all power of work left me. I had meant to finish the score of The Walküre, but my memory of what I had meant it to be vanished. I returned to Zurich ill, and in the course of the winter, during repeated attacks of erysipelas, completed the Walküre with difficulty (but, between ourselves, it is well done). In the beginning of summer I went to the neighbourhood of Geneva, where, under the direction of a first-rate doctor, I underwent a most beneficial course of hydropathy, which I have just completed, and have returned here, where I found your letter awaiting me. It was too soon to think of commencing the composition of Young Siegfried. Liszt is going to visit me at the end of September: I shall go through my two finished scores with him; and then I hope to start on Siegfried refreshed and inspired, and to present it finished to the world by the end of next year.
That is all I have to tell you of myself. With sore difficulty I got, while in London last year, a finished copy of Rhine Gold from Dresden. I left it behind with a young friend and gifted musician, Klindworth, in order that he might make a good pianoforte arrangement of it. He had the misfortune to be ill himself for a long time, and has only recently returned me the full score and the completed arrangement for the pianoforte; a fair copy of the latter must be taken here, and for this purpose the copyist must have the score on account of the annotations. When the copy is finished I can do what I like with the score, and I promise that you shall have it after Liszt's visit. As yet no copy has been made of the Walküre, as I have only one good copyist here, and he has not much time. I am so unwilling to let my original scores out of my hands that I shall not send the Walküre to Dresden to be copied; not so much for fear of its loss, though that would be serious enough, as because I need to have it at hand in order to go on with the work. So you must kindly excuse delay in the receipt of my works, and attribute it to the above-mentioned circumstances. I will get you Schopenhauer's minor works. There is so much that is new and important in them, that I can promise you pleasure from them, in spite of the undeniable asperities and prejudices of a pronounced misanthrope which may occasionally repel you. At the same time I will send you the score of my Faust overture, which, owing to an unexpected suggestion, I retouched. In its present form it seems to me not unworthy of myself. But the books must be sent from Leipzig. As regards the external events of my life, the German theatres continue giving my operas very badly, and none the less with a persistent success that fills me with humorous amazement. Efforts are being made to procure permission for me to return to Germany, especially on the part of the Grand Duke of Weimar, who has interested himself actively in the matter, but without, so far, a favourable result. For my part, what I chiefly desire for myself is health to carry out all the schemes of which I am full; unfortunately, more full than need be, for, besides the Nibelung dramas, I have got a Tristan and Isolde (in which Love is treated as a power of anguish) in my head, and also a wholly new subject, The Conquerors (a Buddhist legend concerning final Redemption). I am so possessed by both of them that it requires some steadfastness of purpose to force them into the background in favour of the Nibelungs.
Now, dearest August, you see in black and white what I, who am still in need of rest, could do at one bound. Keep up your cheerful spirits and your clear-headedness, and suit your philosophy to your needs. At the best we can only know what we desire to know; for you must allow that, in spite of our knowledge, we are nothing more or less than embodiments of will, and as such the most powerful, if not the wisest, of things created. Farewell, and believe me,
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. 7