I am writing to you again today so that I do not forget a matter of some importance to me. - While I was still in Dresden I made every conceivable effort to buy a book which no longer existed in the booktrade. I finally found it in the royal library. It is a thin little volume in small octavo or maybe even duodecimo, and is entitled: “The Volsungasaga” - translated from the Old Norse by H. von der Hagen. It comprises (I believe) a part of the Old Norse “courtly romances” which - if I am not mistaken - Hagen published in Breslau between 1812 and 1816. I now need this book in order to glance briefly through it again: there is no possibility of obtaining it here. There is nothing for it, I am afraid, but for you, my good friend, to borrow this book from the royal library, in your own name, and, as a favour, send it to me here for a fairly short period. You could perhaps parcel it up with something else (Figaro?) and I shall then send it back to you - within 2 weeks at the latest - with your Rausse books. Everything by post of course. - My music scores can easily go as freight - when you have finished looking through them. - I don’t think you would be risking anything with the book: for - even if the worst came to the worst and it went missing or was stolen, you would only have to answer for its loss, i.e. pay the library the cost of the book. But it won’t come to that.
With regard to the planned completion of the great drama which I now have in mind, there is little I can tell you at present. You must remember that - before I wrote the poem of “Siegfried’s death” - I sketched out the entire myth in its imposing overall context: that poem was an attempt - which I thought of as being feasible on our modern stage - to present a crucial turning-point in the myth by hinting at the overall context. But when I turned to its musical execution and was finally obliged to fix my sights firmly on our modern stage, I felt how incomplete was the product I had planned: all that remained of the vast overall context - which alone can give the characters their enormous, striking significance - was epic narration and a retelling of events on a purely conceptual level. In order, therefore, to render “Siegfried’s death” feasible, I wrote “Young Siegfried”: but the more imposing a structure the whole thing assumed, the more it was bound to dawn on me, as I began the scenico-musical realization of “Young Siegfried”, that all I had done was to increase the need for a clearer presentation to the senses of the whole of the overall context. I now see that, in order to be fully understood from the stage, I must present the entire myth in visual terms. It was not only this concentration which persuaded me to adopt my new plan, but, more especially, the overwhelming pathos of the material which I shall in this way be able to present on stage and which offers me a wealth of ideas for an artistic reworking which it would be a sin for me not to use. Imagine the contents of Brünnhilde’s narration - in the final scene of “Young Siegfried” - the fate of Siegmund and Siegelind, Wodan’s struggle with his own inclination and with custom (Fricka); the Valkyrie’s glorious defiance, Wodan’s tragic anger with which he punishes that defiance: imagine this as I intend it, with the enormous wealth of moments such as these, drawn together into a coherent drama, and what shall be created is a tragedy of the most shattering effectiveness which, at the same time, will make a clear impression on the senses of all that my audience needs to have absorbed if they are to have no difficulty in understanding “Young Siegfr.” and “S.’s death” - in their widest sense. I am now planning to preface these three dramas with a fairly substantial prelude which will have to be performed on its own on a special introductory festival day: it begins with Alberich, fired by erotic desire, pursuing the three watermaidens of the Rhine and being spurned by each of them in turn (in playful high spirits), so that he finally steals the Rhinegold in his fury: - in itself this gold is only a glittering trinket in the watery depths (Siegfr. death, Act III, Sc. I), but another power resides within it which can be coaxed from it only by the man who renounces love. - (here you have the structural motif which leads up to Siegf.’s death: imagine the wealth of consequences!) The capture of Alberich, the allocation of the gold to the two giant brothers, the swift fulfilment of Alberich’s curse as embodied in these two characters, one of whom immediately kills the other - all this forms the subject of the prelude. - But I have already said too much, precisely because it is bound to be too little for me to give you an intelligible account of the enormous wealth of material here. - But I should like to have the “Volsungasaga” again; not to model my own work on it (you will easily discover how my poem is related to this legend), but to call to mind again all that I had once before worked out in individual detail. -
But there is something else which persuaded me to expand this plan: the impossibility I felt of being able to perform even “Young Siegfried” in Weimar - or anywhere else - at all adequately. I do not care to suffer - and, indeed, can no longer suffer - the torments of half-measures. - With this new conception of mine I am moving completely out of touch with our present-day theatre and its audiences: I am breaking decisively and for ever with the formal present. You now ask what I intend to do with my plan? - To begin with, I plan to carry it through as far as it lies within my poetic and musical powers to do so: this will occupy me for at least three full years. I am thus placing myself entirely in the Ritters’ hands: I pray to God that they remain unswervingly loyal to me!
- A performance is something I can conceive of only after the Revolution; only the Revolution can offer me the artists and listeners I need. The coming Revolution must necessarily put an end to this whole theatrical business of ours: they must all perish, and will certainly do so, it is inevitable. Out of the ruins I shall then summon together what I need: I shall then find what I require. I shall then run up a theatre on the Rhine and send out invitations to a great dramatic festival: after a year’s preparations I shall then perform my entire work within the space of four days: with it I shall then make clear to the men of the Revolution the meaning of that Revolution, in its noblest sense. This audience will understand me: present-day audiences cannot. -
However extravagant this plan may be, it is the only one on which I stake my life, my heart and my every thought. If I survive to witness its execution, I shall have lived a glorious life; if not, I shall have died for a beautiful ideal. Only this thought can still cheer me. -
Fare you well!
Yours,
R.W.
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 129