My dear, beloved Frau Ritter,
Five days ago Karl received a letter from Bordeaux in which Jessie indicated in the briefest of terms that she intended - as she herself expressed it - “to break with the immediate past and throw into the fire, unread, any letters written in my hand; he was to burn these lines of hers at once, and inform me only briefly of the gist of their content.” -
If, in response to such summarily brief proceedings against me, I had been permitted to express my feelings towards her with similar conciseness, I should have done so somewhat as follows: - that I gather from this, at least, that I was not able to instil in Jessie love as I understand it, but that I am distressed to find that I could not even inspire in this woman the most necessary respect for me.
In writing to you now, however, I am placing in your hands the testament of a love of which I shall never be ashamed and which, although physically dead, may perhaps be a source of joyful memory and consoling recollection until my dying day. You must therefore understand me aright, my dear Frau Ritter, when I report with somewhat less stoic brevity the course of the catastrophe of which I stand accused with such childish conclusiveness. At least you understood me when, in the course of your sojourn on Lake Geneva, I explained to you my feelings on receipt of that letter which decided me to travel at once to Bordeaux. Even then I thought I could see from the turn which events had taken that Jessie had taken upon herself more than she had the strength to manage, and that she was not equal to her resolve. Never for a moment did it escape me that her decision could be realized only by the boldest revolutionary force, - that this decision and her feelings could only be justified to the extent that they appeared to be of such an insuperably strong nature that all other conceivable considerations must by contrast seem weak and unavailing. - In accordance with my general views on human nature, I am always disposed to welcome such decisions and feelings with the greatest joy because, given the circumstances which determine our lives at present, I see in them only an expression of true, unperverted human nature. The woman who rebels out of love, though she were destroyed in the process, is mine, and inasmuch as this love was directed at me personally, it could have brought me only happiness, though I too were destroyed by it. Thus and thus alone - following the declaration of her love - did I regard my relationship with Jessie: and no other prospect save this alone could have enabled me to ignore all other considerations, however keenly they may have affected me.
But only as a rebel could Jessie have carried out her decision, not through treaties and agreements with those who could never, ever treat with her or enter into any agreement with her. (Can a prince decree a republic?) - And so the news that Jessie was incapable of facing up to the force of circumstances, - that she suddenly found it better to treat with others, and to allow them to do as they pleased with her and with her decisions, - that was bound to evoke in me more than a mere doubt in Jessie’s strength and in the infallibility of her awareness of love. Our relationship had suddenly become something quite different. Whereas I could previously have trusted not only in my ability to defend Jessie’s decision before the whole world once that decision had been carried out, but, more especially, in my capacity to propitiate those hearts most bitterly offended by it, - I now knew that I was entirely lacking the skill which it would require, in the course of our negotiations, to win a mistress whom I should not have had to woo from anyone, but whose actual conquest I should simply have had to defend. I was now forced to realize that only personal intervention would protect my honour against the most brutal attacks, and that I should have to act in this matter with total candour, openly confessing my love and the inexpressibly high value I placed upon its fulfilment, - yet, for her own part, Jessie could only ever be left to rely upon her own strength alone, since she was held in chains from which she, and she alone, had to prove herself capable of breaking free. In the light of my recent experiences I had almost every reason to doubt whether I could, indeed, impute to her the necessary strength. However, I did what it was incumbent upon me to do, and confess that I acted in utter indifference to the risk I was running of being shot through the head by her injured husband. -
You will recall our conversations in Villeneuve, when I expressed myself in complete agreement with your view that there was little or no outside help that could be offered to Jessie at present, - that she alone was in a position to help herself, and that the only way she could do so was by dint of her unswerving persistence and power to frustrate all the intrigues to which, quite understandably, she would now be exposed by those around her in their desire to undermine her feelings towards me. - Well, the only power which could have helped her - the power of her love - she has abandoned and betrayed! She is lost to herself, for - she is weak!!
The woman who wished to bring me redemption has proved herself a child! - Forgive me - but I can regard her only as worthy of pity! - What stupid frailty in the consciousness that she had to treat with the enemies of her love, and give these enemies of hers her promise that she would deny her lover all means of communication! Thus to abandon herself totally to the power of people who would clearly use that power for no other purpose than that of systematically stamping out the love she felt in her heart, - such a move would certainly have shown great boldness and strength on Jessie’s part, if only her faith had been unshakeable, and if, under cover of her promise, she had worked the more openly and candidly to gain her freedom as quickly as possible. But since, at the same time, she wrote that this relationship might last a year or more, I must sadly admit that this very undertaking on her part was bound to seem the very essence of her frailty, embodying a weakness which was already completely felt as such, but which still sought to disguise itself beneath the semblance of strength. Oh, how strong would Jessie’s faith in me have had to be, if it had had to sustain her love in the face of attacks from both her own frailty and the malice of others! -
I do not know what lies she has been told concerning me, or whether she herself might suddenly have been so foolish - forgive the expression! - as to misinterpret certain passages in my letter to Mme Taylor? I finally wrote to this lady to tell her that, great as was my love for Jessie and immeasurably valuable as its fulfilment would have been in my life, I was none the less capable, in the pride of my soul, of renouncing all hope of it the moment I discovered that Jessie’s love for me did not have the irresistible power necessary to decide her - her mother - in her favour: for I would not woo her, but would only receive her from her own hand as an unexpected stroke of supreme good fortune. - Could Jessie’s understanding of love suddenly have become so befuddled as to place such a gross misinterpretation on the sentiments I had expressed in that letter? But this was the inexpressible charm of Jessie’s love that she understood everything about me so quickly, so clearly and surely - that I could not detect in her even a trace of old-fashioned, narrow-minded prejudice, or - if I did - the slightest breath from my lips was all that it required to disperse it! - Or might they - and it is this surmise which gives me the strength to act! - might they have approached my poor wife in an attempt to discover whether we had been legally separated by priests and lawyers? Might they have received from her the very information they desired, namely that I had not yet revealed to her that I was wooing a woman of means, and was therefore asking her to stand down? Might they have gone to Jessie, armed with this evidence, and suddenly confronted her with the idea that my intentions towards her were not “respectable and decent”? - But had it not been Jessie’s total frankness in such repugnant matters as bourgeois honour that had pleased me so much about her? Who understood better than she that I love my unhappy wife, that I was bound to her by a thousand chains of old and mutual suffering, and that only with a bleeding heart could I tear myself away from the unhappy woman in order to release her from a fate whose implications she could not grasp but which could cause her only pain and torment, without her ever knowing or understanding why? Who felt more keenly than Jessie how utterly miserable I was following our separation, since the most candid proof which I gave her of my misery inspired in her that marvellous resolve to break with the world in order to be with me, to requite me for everything and to cure all the wounds I have suffered in my life, including these most recent wounds of mine? Who realized more clearly than Jessie that I no doubt had to be separated from that poor woman, but that I could never injure her, never offend or mistreat her? After all, she was prepared to accompany me to the remotest corners of the world, in order to spare the unhappy woman the sight of our love, nay, even the knowledge that we were happy in our love! - How delighted I was to discover in her letters not a single trace of that barbarous and unworthy bourgeois hypocrisy! She was nothing but love: we dedicated ourselves to the God of love, and scorned all the idols of this miserable world so vehemently that we did not even deign to mention them. Could one of these idols have taken possession of Jessie so suddenly that she was forced to sacrifice her God to it with such insanely swift and willing eagerness? Could it be possible that this wretched bourgeois consideration had suddenly seized control of her heart? - If she had been forced by present circumstances and by her mother’s disciplinary measures to agree that I should be asked to explain myself on this point, - very well then! they should have addressed this demand to me and I would have understood that - painful though it would inevitably have been to submit to such heartless and repugnant pedantries - it was nevertheless now necessary for me to pacify a mother and set her mind at rest. - However, my Jessie simply did not think of this entirely natural expedient: instead, she suddenly took it into her head to see in the information which had presumably come from my wife an ostensible reason for breaking off her relationship with me! In a trice she felt I had offended her, — she suddenly saw that the happiness of love lay in bourgeois respectability, and was so inspired by that thought that she did not even consider it necessary to demand an explanation from me, rather was she suddenly so outraged by what she assumed to be my attitude in this matter that she thought it appropriate to deny me even a modicum of respect, but to send word by my young friend that “she would henceforth burn all my letters unread” etc. How was this possible? What force could so suddenly have dethroned the most glorious love and driven it out into the world like some old cur? - Oh, everything - even the basest action - is possible for the heart which has abandoned to cowardice the key to its innermost chamber! - Alas! alas for the weak and the cowardly!! -
And yet! How pitiable is the unhappy girl! My heart is broken in twain with grief at how far she has fallen! - Mother! my dear, beloved Frau Ritter! If only you could have witnessed this triumph of love as it burst forth from every sinew of this rich and blessed woman, when she revealed to me that she was mine - not through any spoken confession - but entirely through her own self, through the involuntary, radiant and naked manifestation of love! If only you could have seen this joy, this rapturous delight which animated every fibre of her being, from the movement of her fingertips to the most subtle workings of her mind, when this youthful woman cast her lustrous radiance on me, - sorely tried as I was, unhappy with life and devoid in truth of all those gifts considered necessary to work such wonders as flourished here for my benefit, allowing me to taste the heady intoxication of love! Do not ask me to describe what she was to me, and what she still is in the rapturous memory which I yet have of her! But feel the beauty and the fullness of the love which drove this highly gifted and glorious young woman to take such bold and exultantly audacious decisions, - and then share with me the deep, deep despair provoked within me by the happy success of a course of treatment prescribed by her prudent mother and a solicitous husband in order to cure her heart of its “indecent” passion for me!
Oh, you must believe as I do that love dwells within her heart, and that I did not dream it: it lives, it lives, - and loving nature puts forth her buds of happiness in this most wretched of worlds, with all the unimpaired fullness of her truest nature! But her mortal foe continues to wield a terrible power: its agents are education, marriage, decorum, and business, - and its mask is the deceptive likeness of that love; ruthlessly and murderously it wages war against love’s simple unaffectedness, - but always with a smile of loving concern! - Well! Here it can boast of success! - They can be proud of their victory, these clever physicians: it is a beautiful corpse which they have captured as their booty! They are going now to bury it amid pomp and solemn circumstance, - let us, my dear friends, scatter sweetly smelling flowers upon her grave! -
No! we shall not insult her, the dead woman - cut down by the hand of those murderers, - for she was - love itself! Never, dear mother, shall I be ashamed of this love: though it has faded and though I am firmly convinced that none can revive it, her kiss was yet the greatest pleasure I have known in my life! Neither honour, glory nor fame could ever outweigh that pleasure! - Farewell, you blessed beauty! You were dearer to me than all else, and I shall never forget you! Farewell! -
[...]
In Montmorency, at precisely the same time as Jessie was openly revealing her feelings for me, I perceived from a sign that I was being sought out in Paris by certain friends from Zurich who - as I supposed - had been apprised of my affairs. It was impossible - I might almost say physically impossible - to engage in a detailed discussion of the reasons for my recent move with any of my friends - however well-meaning they may have been. Whereas I was already resolved upon a policy of self-preservation, should the need arise, and to avoid all such attempts at reconciliation, the result of Jessie’s communication and my consequent excitability was to render me even more incapable of facing embarrassing explanations. I left Montmorency and Paris suddenly, without taking leave of a single one of my friends there. In Geneva, where I turned my steps, I was informed by a friend from Paris - who had written to me poste restante in half a dozen towns in the hope that one of his letters would eventually reach me - that my poor wife had herself arrived in Paris in order to seek me out and explain herself to me. Although I was bound to suppose that my wife had undertaken this step only at the insistence of my friends in Zurich, and although I believed it safe to assume that she was entirely in error if she thought that, by attempting to clarify the contents of her latest letters, she could heal dissensions which were infinitely older and more deeply rooted, - yet my simple discovery of the very fact that she had sought me out and wished to be reconciled with me was bound to produce a deep and touching impression upon me. Although, as I say, I was bound to recognize that she was mistaken about the two of us, even this very mistake of hers touched me, since it was the unequivocal expression of a love which was stronger than her mistaken understanding of my own nature. For my wife is by no means weak by nature, and I had far rather expected her to turn her back on me, proudly and coldly, on receiving my parting letter, - indeed, I was afraid of her pride inasmuch as it led me to worry that she would refuse any financial help which I offered her, - a refusal which, as I wrote to tell her, would have made me unspeakably unhappy. In these circumstances, the news I now received affected me most profoundly, and certain details which I was told about her filled me with the deepest and most poignant sympathy for a woman who in any case was unhappy. It was now impossible for me to strike the final and hardest blow of all while her mind was in torment: on the contrary, I now felt a deep sense of duty to offer her comfort in the immediate future, to show myself a humane physician, and hence I saw myself having recourse to whatever remedies might seem suitable for my immediate purpose. I had to help her survive the immediate weeks ahead, give her some glimmer of consolation, and in that way at least accustom her to the idea of our separation, but at the same time make this separation as bearable as possible in the short term, and thus take advantage of the great healing power of time before informing her, after a certain period had elapsed, of what in the mean time would have become inevitable. And so I wrote to my wife and told her of my decision - which had only then been firmly taken - to go to Greece and the Orient. I knew the beneficial effect this news would have on her; it would give her a kind of satisfaction, especially in the sight of my friends in Zurich, who might now believe that I wished to shake myself free not only from my wife but from present conditions as a whole. Although I insisted expressly upon the contents of my previous letter and once more made it clear to my wife that I regarded our separation as necessary, I did not omit to underline my most sympathetic concern for her well-being: I promised that in the future I would not leave her uninformed as to my activities, and I expressed the wish that she might remain in Zurich, draw a small garden plot, look after our dog and bird and, as far as possible, live a life of hope: - “who knows - I concluded - if God grants us long life, we may one day see each other again.”
[...]
I pray that I may soon be able to work again! How welcome that would be to me, for I know what pleasure my work gives you. I pray that my imagination may shortly come to my aid once more, now that reality and imagination have again become blurred in my mind! - I shall not complete my Wiland: the faults of this poem are too clear to be hidden from me now by my tired and subjective feelings. Wiland is dead: he will not fly! - I think what I shall do next is compose my thoughts for an essay on genius - the communal and the solitary. Then, when I have regained my strength, I shall make a start on Achilles! -
Do what you can to visit us soon, otherwise all will be far from well. -
Fare you well, my dear and much loved Frau Ritter! Remain loyal and well-disposed towards me! -
Remember me kindly to my darling Emilie, and give my love to all your family.
Yours,
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 110