My most honoured friend,
You can most readily conceive of the impression produced upon me by your verdict on “Lohengrin” - a verdict which has just been brought to my attention - , if I report that I have discovered, with a certain smile I find it hard to define, that in none of the reviews of the work which I have seen so far, has there been the least mention of the one point which I most expected to find there and which you yourself have now emphasized with such striking precision.
It is impossible for me to go into detail on this point at present: I am at this very moment engaged in a creative process which renders any critical distraction impossible. Forgive me, therefore, for the brevity with which I intend to make the following important remarks. -
Between my “Lohengrin” and my present plans there lies a whole world. What is so dreadfully distressing for the likes of us is to see our cast-off skin held out involuntarily as our true self. If all were as I wished it to be, “Lohengrin” - the poem of which dates back to 1845 - would long ago have been forgotten in favour of my more recent works which have given even me satisfactory evidence of the progress I have made.
Let me explain. In 1847 the music was completely finished. In 1848 there came the revolution: the mists parted. In 1849 I had to flee: with a feeling of rejoicing I turned my back on the whole damn business: I vented my feelings in a brochure: “Art and Revolution”, and collected my thoughts earnestly together for a thin volume: “The Art-Work of the Future”. I was even close to breaking with the world on a domestic level, too. Then one day my glance fell on the abandoned score of “Lohengrin”: I regretted that it had never been heard; good-naturedly I wrote a few lines to Liszt, saying that if it amused him to do so, he should stage the work in Weimar. - Well, it had to be Liszt who always takes everything so seriously. - As I say, when nobody else made the point you did, I felt like laughing out loud: - but I have stopped laughing now and might almost feel angry that “Lohengrin” has finally seen the light of day after all. If you get to know my present poems, you will understand why. - This much I will say! I am glad that I once insisted so obstinately on the Christian standpoint, and that I did so as an artist - with the greatest naïveté. When I had finished the poem of “Tannhäuser”, somebody demanded that I should let Venus triumph over St Elisabeth: - I found it an admirable suggestion, only I had to say that, in that case, it would not be “Tannhäuser” that I wrote. When “Lohengrin” appeared in print, it met with the most fundamental objection on the part of one of my most intelligent friends: Lohengrin, he said, must finally become human. It was this same objection which comprises your own reproach. I actually began to think the matter over and to avail myself of various suggestions that had been made for changing the work: I made every effort to delude myself into believing in a mortified God etc. - fortunately none of these changes was thought adequate by my friend; if I wished to leave Lohengrin to his fate, I had to send him out into the world just as he was, i.e. as the Christian folk had once made him - if I was not to commit one inconsistency after another. It was with a sense of total intoxication that I plunged into the music: there was nothing else to be done; at least I prevented myself in this way from writing a rationalistic opera.
I know what you mean when you speak of monotonous, unrhythmical melody: the solution to the underlying question here is one which I think I have given, theoretically, in the third part of my book “Opera and Drama”, which is shortly to appear in print. The reason lies not in the music but - since music after all can only ever be language developed to its fullest potential - in the language itself, in the verse. At present we have only inadequately formed verse, not the real thing. My musical expression, moreover, continues to be related only supersensually to language: a substantial, sensual relationship between the two has escaped me until now. But this is not something I have worked out theoretically - in spite of the fact that you will set eyes on my theory before you encounter the practical demonstration from which it derives: the theory came to me through my poem, “Siegfried’s Death”, in which I chanced quite spontaneously upon the language necessary for the music.
There is one point on which you perhaps do me an injustice: you call my “Lohengrin” an actual polemic against modern opera; you attribute to me a puritanical zeal in my having written it. So be it! but do not call it an intentional polemic: when I wrote this opera, I was so obsessed by the subject that my only aim was to bring to light a work that was full and luxuriant, and loudly resonant: and this aim was so far removed from all idea of protest that, on the contrary, I failed to see what it was in reality that turned this work into a form of protest.
Enough! I cannot now criticize, and perhaps can never criticize. - But - if only you knew how I felt today when I read your article! For the last 6 days I have been writing away at a “Young Siegfried”, today I finally drafted a complete sketch (in dialogue form) of the closing scene - Brünnhilde’s awakening. When you get to know this scene, think of me and of how I felt when I heard you speaking about me.
Well then, let me conclude by thanking you and by expressing the hope that we shall remain friends! Do you accept? - Liszt wants “Young Siegfried” to be kept a secret for the time being. Once I have finished the poem, I shall send it to Weimar - Liszt will communicate it to you immediately, and I shall then have a moment’s rest to write more and - I hope - better.
Fare you well, and accept once again the most sincere thanks of
Your most obedient servant
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 122