My dear friend,
I am more or less back where I started, and the devil has me in his clutches again. No treatment on earth has the power to preserve me from the loathsomeness of outside impressions: their evil influence continues to cloud the well-spring of my inspiration and cause it to run painfully dry. Here I sit with all my wishes, hopes and endeavours: I see - and feel - with unbearable clearness that they must all remain unsatisfied and futile! Insensitivity wherever I turn! Each of my plans is bound to strike me at once in all its grey and desolate impossibility! I can no longer flatter myself with self-delusion. The only thing that could sustain me in a happy state of self-deception is denied me: - sympathy, words of true sympathy falling on my ears! Everyone I approach hangs his head, sighs, falls silent and, having made this effort, reverts to his old insensitivity. You, in fact, are now the only person I can still turn to for sympathy, for you are the only person who has the energy at least to answer me, - although I cannot help noticing that your letters are now written in as prolix a style as possible with the disturbing aim of filling as much space as possible: often, such as after your last two letters, I ask myself: “is it after all so difficult for him to fill the page with characters?” - Others simply do not answer at all, I asked Liszt to send me his medallion for Christmas: no answer. Bülow has even sunk to such depths of sheer impropriety that he has not uttered a single sound in reply to two letters, the second of which, in particular, contained a number of requests which required prompt attention. And so I always think of myself as a beggar running after all and sundry in the hope of picking up the odd penny! It is not quite the same with Karl: he broods interminably on the great suffering caused him by his stomach, which he has ruined visiting the confectioner’s; he has no time to worry himself over trifles such as I foolishly allow to trouble me: and every now and then he does what he can; in the 3 weeks he has been away from here, he has finally written a total of twenty-one words to me, which actually makes one word a day! Ah! the unhappy Ritters, what a bad way they are in!!
In such circumstances - which I shall not go into but which you will infer from the nature of my present mood - I do not know whether it comes from inside me, or from outside, if I am again unwell. As far as my bodily functions are concerned, I must say that I am still tolerably healthy: but - my nerves! I admit that I overdid things towards the end of my stay at the hydropathic establishment: it was unfortunate that I had no doctor in whom to confide: my cheerful frame of mind was probably a result of nervous irritability, since, in spite of my cheerful high spirits, I was uncommonly over-excitable; yet it was a most agreeable sense of over-excitability. It was inevitable that a release of tension should follow: but it could assume a different aspect — an agreeable sense of repose - if some pleasure, some external influence inviting a feeling of contentment, were to come my way. But - oh my God! what stubbornness, what tediousness and obtuseness people show in their reluctance to break free from the outside world, - so that the only feeling I have left is regret at ever having counted on the world outside! and this regret is a dreadful torment to me. I am once more tearing at my own flesh, consuming more and more until there will be nothing left to appease my hunger!
Indeed, I have long been inwardly consumed! when I look back on my life, I am bound to say that little sustenance from outside has ever been offered to a mind as needy as my own. Nor have I ever for a moment lived in comfort or at ease: nothing but sharp corners to knock against, - nothing but spikes to tread on! And now, for my recovery - I do not say for my reward (for there is nothing here to reward!) - no! only to regain the ability to consume myself for the sake of others - which, in turn, can be my only form of refreshment! - I desire nothing more than — ah! why should I have to repeat it! - Go to concerts, and to the theatre - to - amuse yourselves!!
Nothing will come of my concert: I have abandoned the idea! I can no longer persuade myself to engage in half-measures and undertake a botched piece of work! The futility, and the impossibility of finding self-satisfaction, emerges all too clearly from this. All further plans which were bound up with this idea have been ruined in advance by the insensitivity of my friends. When I first thought of this concert, my only wish was to be able to hear the Prelude to Lohengrin, but I now renounce the expensive apparatus necessary for realizing this wish. How strange that I must feel as Beethoven did: he could not hear his own music because he was deaf (nothing else could have prevented him!) I cannot hear mine because I am more than deaf, because I do not exist in my own time, because I wander around among you like a ghost, because the whole wide world is full of shits! - Ah, my dear friend! at least write as much as you can about me and fill the music journals, so that I at least shall become very famous: then I may after all get something out of it! Remember me to my niece Johanna, Emilie’s dear friend: ah, if only she would put in a good word for me! if she only asks properly, she will certainly succeed, she’s a good girl: just tell her how badly off her poor devil of an uncle is! She now has it in her power to help me achieve recognition; for I discover to my very great delight that she has taken a Prussian Prince as her lover, and that he has already accomplished a good deal for her - including her contract: perhaps if she is particularly complaisant and if her Mama has no objections, she may obtain what I want! Ah, how happy that would make me, and how blissfully contented the Ritters would then be, watching Tannhäuser in Berlin, where I could ensure a performance if only people were to show some sense, and a little indulgence!! -
Ah! if I were not to get up from my bed tomorrow, if I were no longer to wake up to a life that disgusts me, yes - I should be even more blissfully contented than the Ritters at Tannhäuser!!! - Adieu for today!!
Past 11 o’clock! again nothing! - Very well! this letter must go off today, I cannot leave such outpourings lying around in the letterbox. -
It is true, is it not, that it is very unmanly of me to pour out my complaints in this way? that I should do better to imitate the Stoics and smile sweetly when in pain, play the insensate, and pretend I have no feelings, i.e. tell lies and dissemble, in order to be - if not a true human being - at least as great a man as possible, one who is “above fate”, i.e. someone who wants to play a role, be other than he is, “represent” something, some phantasm, some idea such as L. Bonaparte, for ex., “society”? - and all for the sake of those dear sweet philistines who can say “goodness gracious! what a man!” - No, I want everyone to know - everyone who can take pleasure in my works, i.e. my life and what I do, that what gives them pleasure is my suffering, my extreme misfortune! - My dear friend! I am often now beset by strange thoughts on “art”, and on the whole I cannot help finding that, if we had life, we should have no need of art. Art begins at precisely the point where life breaks off: where nothing more is present, we call out in art, “I wish”. I simply do not understand how a truly happy individual could ever hit upon the idea of producing “art”: only in life can we “achieve” anything, - is our “art” therefore not simply a confession of our impotence? - Indeed! or such at least is our art, and all the art which springs from our present dissatisfaction with life. It is no more than “a desire expressed with the utmost clarity”! I should give up all my art if, by doing so, I could regain my youth, find health, nature, a woman who loved me unreservedly, and fine children! Take it! Give me the rest in return! - Ah, how ludicrous it would be if, with all our enthusiasm for art, what we were fighting over were simply thin air! All right, goodbye for today! You will have had enough!
Yours,
R.W.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 134