My dear Liszt,
I have to say it - you are a true friend!
Let me say no more than this! for, whereas I have always recognized friendship between men as the noblest and most splendid of all human relationships, only now have I found that ideal so completely realized, for you have allowed me not only to imagine what a friend is, but to feel and grasp it, too. -
I shall not thank you, - for you alone can thank yourself adequately by dint of the pleasure you derive from being what you are. It is ennobling to have a friend, - but far more ennobling - to be a friend. -
The fact that I have found you enables me not only to bear with fortitude my banishment from Germany but to regard my exile almost as a stroke of good fortune, since I could not possibly have advanced my own cause in Germany as effectively as you have done. But - it could only have been you! - Yet I cannot write in praise of you: only when we meet shall I be able to tell you to your face how I feel. As much as your dealings with me have been marked by thoughtfulness and consideration, so much, you may rest assured, am I able to grasp and value the nature of your concern for me. I know that you had no choice but to act as you have done, and I am especially grateful to you for the way in which you have shown your concern for me. - There is only one thing that worries me in all this, namely that you neglect yourself in helping me, since I cannot replace that part of you which is lost in the process. Think well on this!
- Your letter left a deep impression on me in a variety of ways. I hold certain convictions which you yourself will perhaps never share but which you will not deem it necessary to oppose when you discover that in no way do they impede me in my artistic activities. I have felt the pulse of modern art and know that it will die! This knowledge, however, fills me not with despondency but with joy, for I know at the same time that it is not art in general which will perish but only our own particular type of art - which stands remote from real life - , whereas true - imperishable - constantly renewed art is still to be born. The monumental character of our art will disappear, we shall abandon our habit of clinging firmly to the past, our egotistical concern for permanence and immortality at any price: we shall let the past remain the past, the future - the future, and we shall live only in the present, in the here and now and create works for the present age alone. Remember how fortunate I once considered you were in the practice of your own particular art, precisely because you were a performing artist, a real, actual artist whose every performance was clearly an act of giving: the fact that you could do so only upon a musical instrument was not your fault but the involuntary constraint of our age which compels the individual to depend entirely upon his own resources and renders impossible that sense of fellowship through which the individual artist, with the greatest possible deployment of his powers, might become part of a communal - immediate and actual - work of art. It was certainly not any wish to flatter you which made me say those things, rather was I - half-consciously - expressing my belief that only the performer is the real, true artist. All that we create as poets and composers expresses a wish but not an ability: only the performance itself reveals that ability or art. Believe me, I should be ten times happier if I were a dramatic performer instead of a dramatic poet and composer. - Now that I have come to hold this conviction, it can no longer be of interest to me to create works which I know in advance must be denied all life in the present in return for the flattering prospect of future immortality: what cannot be true today will remain untrue in the future as well. No longer do I abandon myself to the delusive idea of creating works for a future beyond the present: but if I am to create works for the present age, that age must offer me a less repellent aspect than is now the case. I renounce all fame, and more especially the insane spectre of posthumous fame, because I love humankind far too dearly to condemn them, out of self-love, to the kind of poverty of ideas which alone sustains the fame of dead composers. - As things stand at present, what attracts me to artistic creativity is no longer ambition, but the desire to communicate to my friends, and the wish to give them pleasure: when I know that I have satisfied this desire and this wish of mine, I myself shall be happy and utterly contented. If you now perform my Lohengrin in your tiny town of Weimar, and if you do so with pleasure and affection, joy and success, - and even if this were only for the two performances of which you write - I shall feel so happy at knowing that my intentions have been so perfectly realized that all my cares concerning this work will be wholly at an end, and I shall be able to devote myself solely to the new task of offering you some other new work in a similar vein. You must be the judge! Can you reproach me for holding these convictions, since they relieve me of all feelings of egotism and all petty ambition? Of course not! - Ah, if only I could communicate to you the inspiriting power of my convictions!
Listen while I tell you the impression your letter has had on me!
Last May I sent the poem of my Siegfried to a bookseller for him to publish - as it stands. In a brief introduction I explained that I have no hopes of ever seeing the work completed and performed, and that I am therefore communicating it to my friends simply to show them my purpose. In fact, I have no intention of composing my Siegfried in an empty void - for the reasons given above. - Now you offer me the artistic fellowship which might enable Siegfried to see the light of day: - I demand performers for my heroes such as have never yet been seen on our stage; where are they to come from? Well, not out of thin air, but from the soil beneath our feet: I believe that you are in the best position to make them grow out of the ground, at least through your enthusiastic support. Irredeemably degenerate as the acting profession now is, the best foundations for all art are still to be found among these foolish actors and singers of ours: their nature, assuming they have not lost heart, is incorruptible: by dint of enthusiasm they can be turned into anything and everything. In a word, once you have produced Lohengrin to your own satisfaction, I shall set about completing Siegfried - but only for you and for Weimar! - Even as recently as 2 days ago I would not have believed I would reach such a decision. - It is you I have to thank for that!
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 113