Dear Luise,
Thank you so much for your kind letter, which certainly came as a great surprise. The impression it made upon me was all the more touching in that the mood which inspired you to write it appeared in every respect to be one of melancholy. I have no really clear notion of your present situation, but I suspect that you must have reason enough to think favourably of those of us who are unhappy. I cannot properly explain what I mean by this, since we have now so few points of contact, and the obvious ones belong rather to the realm of vague feelings than to any real consciousness on my part. And so I see myself obliged to speak almost solely of myself in replying to your letter, the more so since you asked me specifically how I am.
It was about a year ago that I wrote to your Klärchen. I was then staying at a hydropathic establishment with the intention of trying to become a completely healthy human being. Uppermost in my mind was the secret desire to regain my health so as to be able to break totally free from what torments me most in life, namely my art: it was a final, desperate struggle to find happiness, a true and noble zest for life such as is ordained only to those who are fully conscious of their health. That I was deceiving myself in this was soon to become clear: my life is forfeit and, having never enjoyed it, I can now eke it out only by artificial means, in other words - by means of my art. But the despair I feel at confronting the artistic life of Europe with my art is something which can be felt only by those who know to what extent art for me is a substitute for a life of unsatisfied desire: and how superficial, on the other hand, is the judgement of those people who advise me to set about acquiring fame! I pour out into my art the violent need I feel for love, a need which life cannot satisfy, and all I find in return is that people at best mistake me for an energetic - opera reformer! And so I drive myself from one moment of dissatisfaction to the next, but through driving myself in this way, my health has finally sunk into an increasingly steep decline from which nothing - no treatment in the world can save me. My nerves are already wasting completely away; perhaps some outward change in my life might enable me to defer my death for a number of years by artificial means: but this could only affect the moment of my death, it can no longer delay the process of dying. - That, in brief, is all I have to say about myself.
Dresden’s decision to revive Tannhäuser left me feeling fairly indifferent; I know that as far as the most important point was concerned (the role of Tannhäuser) the performance was a dismal failure: that all this fuss and bother appeals to people can give me little cause for satisfaction.
I think back on Dresden only with feelings of abhorrence: no one person ever sacrificed his entire soul more readily than I did there, - and what walls of indifference the sound simply echoed against! Now I discover that people are reproaching me for “ingratitude” towards the King! As if the futility of sacrificing my life and my artistic activities for the sake of an appointment there and for “acts of charity” such as are lavished indiscriminately on any ragamuffin was my fault, rather than the fault of the outdated circumstances which I was finally moved by anger to oppose! - Enough of this! -
Give my kind regards to Marianne, and offer her my warmest congratulations! Will you not visit us some day in this beautiful country of Switzerland? I long with all my heart to see Klärchen and Ottchen sitting at our table again! Give them all my kindest regards, and best wishes to your good husband for his continuing prosperity. My wife asks to add her voice to all these greetings and good wishes. But you, my dear Luise, I would ask above all to write to me again soon and remember with affection
Your brother
Richard.
I have now more or less completed my Nibelung poem: whether I shall set it to music must depend entirely upon the state of my health: unless my situation changes substantially, I doubt whether I shall. I shall probably have the poems published soon.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 153