How I came to leave your letter unanswered for almost four months is something I can now easily explain to myself, but it will not be so easy to explain the reason to you, my dearest friend! At all events, it was the weightiness of your letter that was chiefly to blame, so that to have answered it at all adequately depended not so much upon my will as, more especially, upon my ability to do so. I was very unsettled last summer. Liszt visited me in July; I then went to take the waters at St Moritz in Graubünden (6000 feet above sea-level): at the end of August I repaired to Italy - or at least to such parts as are open to me: Turin, Genoa, Spezzia; I then intended going on to Nice in order to spend some time there; but it was here in this foreign country where such an appalling sense of loneliness preyed upon my mind that I suddenly sank into a deep state of melancholy - which was also the result of a purely physical indisposition - and as a result could not get home quickly enough across Lago maggiore and the Gotthardt. It was while I was recovering here that your letter arrived: but at the same time came an invitation from Liszt to rendezvous with him in Paris. I spent the whole of October there - which led the local newspapers to claim that Liszt and I were planning to perform my operas in Paris: in the midst of all this turmoil, I found it impossible to answer your letter, but fully intended to do so on my return to Zurich. Having arrived back here, I was overwhelmed at last by so violent a desire to set to work on the musical composition of the “Rhinegold” that I was simply not in the right frame of mind to reply to your critical remarks on my poem: it was impossible, I could not! But - after a complete break of 6 years! - I now threw myself passionately into my music, and finally resolved not to write to you until I had finished the composition of the Rhinegold. Well, I have now reached that point; - and I now understand my reluctance to reply to you sooner, for only now that I have finished composing the work do I suddenly find myself in a position to reply to you; and yet my position has changed in the meantime, with the result that I suspect the best course for me is virtually to ignore your criticisms: you are quite right to criticize me, but I, too, am right to have conceived and completed the matter as best I can and may. In other words - I shall not argue with you, but we may well discuss the affair somewhat!
First, however, as regards my present letter, let me tell you how enormously cheered and gratified I was to hear from you and learn how you were faring. I come back to the belief that you strike me as being almost more fortunate in your present position than I am in mine. Every line of your letter attests to your excellent health: I assure you that this news fills me with the most lively admiration! That you were allowed to write me a five-page letter also bears witness to the improvement in your personal situation, an improvement for which I am heartily thankful, although I am bound to admit that I can imagine circumstances in which I might have to forgo each and every alleviation to existence without grieving unduly over what I had given up. One thing counts above all else: freedom! But what is “freedom”? is it - as our politicians believe - “licence?” - of course not! Freedom is: integrity. He who is true to himself, i.e. who acts in accord with his own being, and in perfect harmony with his own nature, is free! strictly speaking, outward constraint is powerless unless it succeeds in destroying the integrity of its victim, inducing him to dissemble and to persuade himself and others that he is a different person from the one he really is. That is true servitude. But the victim of constraint need never let it come to this: and the man who - even under constraint - preserves his integrity also preserves his basic freedom; certainly more than the person who no longer notices constraints such as the whole world now contains, since he has already accommodated his very being to their power and perverted his nature for their sake.
I believe that this “integrity” is essentially the same as the “truth” of which we read in books on philosophy and theology. “Truth” is a concept and, by its nature, is simply objectified “integrity”; the actual content of this “integrity”, however, is “reality” pure and simple, or rather: “the real”, “what really is”, and only what is “material” is “real”, whereas the “immaterial” is certainly also “unreal”, in other words merely “thought” or “imagined”. If I am therefore justified in calling “integrity” the most comprehensive feeling for reality, at the same time as acknowledging that feeling, then “truth”, in the final analysis, is once again merely the concept of that feeling, or at least has become so in philosophy: it is certain, however, that this concept is as remote from reality as “integrity” - in the sense already indicated - is close to it, which is why people have always deluded themselves as to “truth”, so that it has actually become the most deceptive thing in the world; like every concept, it has ended up by becoming no more than a word, and on the basis of such “words” it is of course easy enough to “construct a system”, but in doing so one loses hold of reality. Our surest grasp of reality is through feeling, and true feeling is perceived exclusively through the senses. It must be added that what we understand here by “senses” is not what philosophers and theologians mean when they speak with total contempt of the animal senses, but the human senses which, as is well known, are capable of measuring the stars and imagining their courses. - Now, we shall soon find ourselves in agreement about the “world”, inasmuch as it is the object of our feeling of integrity, if we allow ourselves to be guided by our only reliable source of experience, namely feeling, and pay heed solely to the impressions received from that source. The individual, acting in accordance with his own natural temperament, makes use of endless expedients in order to grasp the world as a whole: these expedients, in all their most manifold complexities, are the “concepts” already described: so proud do we deem ourselves in our ability to grasp a whole by means of concepts that, believing we have the whole, we involuntarily forget that what we have is merely a concept, in other words our pleasure comes simply from an instrument of our own making, while in the meantime we have strayed further than ever from the reality of the world. But the man who in the long term can find no real pleasure in the madness of this self-delusion will no doubt end up by realizing how unsatisfactory is his own nature; he will perceive how arrogant and unedifying is his self-delusion, and he will finally recognize the need to approach reality once again in total consciousness and with the aid of feeling. But how is this reality to be grasped once more, since - as an imaginary whole - it had presented itself not to our feelings but solely to our intellect? It can be grasped of course only if we recognize that the essence of reality lies in its endless multiplicity. This inexhaustible multiplicity which incessantly reproduces and renews itself can be apprehended, however, by feeling, which perceives it simply as a separate, ever-changing phenomenon: this sense of change is the essence of reality, whereas only what is imagined is changelessly unending. Only what changes is real: to be real, to live - what this means is to be created, to grow, to bloom, to wither and to die; without the necessity of death, there is no possibility of life; that alone has no end which has no beginning - but nothing real can be without a beginning, only what has been conceived in the mind. Therefore, to be consumed by truth is to abandon oneself as a sentient human being to total reality: to experience procreation, growth, bloom - withering and decay, to apprehend them unreservedly, in joy and in sorrow, and to choose to live - and die - a life of happiness and suffering. This alone is “to be consumed by truth”. - But in order to make such a consummation possible, we must abandon completely our search for the “whole”: the whole reveals itself to us only in the individual manifestation, for this alone is capable of being apprehended in the true sense of the word; we can really “grasp” a phenomenon only if we can allow ourselves to be fully absorbed by it, just as we must in turn be able to assimilate it fully within us. How is this marvellous process most fully achieved? ask nature! Only through love! - everything that I cannot love remains outside me, and I remain outside it: the philosopher may no doubt imagine that he can grasp what is going on here, but not the true human being. But the full reality of love is possible only between the sexes: only as man and woman can we human beings really love, whereas all other forms of love are mere derivatives of it, originating in it, related to it or an unnatural imitation of it. It is wrong to regard this love as only one manifestation of love in general, and to assume that other and higher forms must therefore exist alongside it. Certainly, he who, like the metaphysician, places abstraction before reality and derives sentient reality from ideality - he who thereby prefers logic to genetics - may be right to imagine that the concept of love existed before the actual expression of love, and accordingly to speak of the revelation of a pre-existing, non-sensuous love by means of real, sensual love: but he will then do well to despise this love as he despises the senses in general. Yet it would be safe to bet that he himself had never loved or been loved in the way that others can love, otherwise he would have realized that in despising this feeling what he had in mind was only animal love, and animal sensuality in general, rather than human love. The highest satisfaction of individual egoism is to be found in its total abandonment, and this is something which human beings can achieve only through love: but the true human being is both man and woman, and only in the union of man and woman does the true human being exist, and only through love, therefore, do man and woman become human. Whenever we speak nowadays of “humankind”, it must be admitted that we are so insensately stupid that we always think involuntarily only of men. But it is the union of man and woman, in other words, love, that creates (physically and metaphorically) the human being, and just as the human being can conceive of nothing more creatively brilliant than his own existence and his own life, so he can never again surpass that act whereby he became human through love; he can only repeat it - just as our entire lives are a constant repetition of the multiplicity of details of individual moments in our lives - and it is this repetition which alone makes possible the unique nature of this love whereby it resembles the ebb and flow of the tide, changing, ending and living anew. It is therefore a grievous misconception of love to regard as a weakness this quality according to which it can constantly repeat itself and be constantly renewed: whereas conceptual love abstracted from real love, like the love of God-knows-what-universal-abstraction, is imagined as the one genuine form of love precisely because it has permanence. The mere possibility of its indefinite continuance proves how non-essential is this kind of love. “Eternal” - in the true sense of the word - is that which negates finitude (or rather: the concept of finitude): the concept of finitude is unsuited to “reality”, for reality, i.e. something that is constantly changing, new and multifarious - is precisely the negation of all that is merely imagined and conceived as finite: the infinitude of metaphysics is eternal unreality. The finite is merely an idea, albeit one that can cause us considerable disquiet; and yet it can do so only when we are unable to apprehend reality through the emotions: if, on the other hand, the reality of love draws upon us with the full force of its presence, it will negate the concept that disquiets us and destroy finitude by preventing all idea of it from entering our minds. Thus only reality is eternal, the most perfect reality, however, comes to us only in the enjoyment of love; it is thus the most eternal of all sentiments. - Egoism, in truth, ceases only when the “I” is subsumed by the “you”: this “I” and “you”, however, no longer show themselves as such the moment I align myself with the wholeness of the world: “I” and “the world” means nothing less than “I” alone; the world will not become a complete reality for me until it becomes “you”, and this is something it can become only in the shape of the individual whom I love. This phenomenon may be repeated in a child or in a friend; but we shall only ever be able to love the child or the friend fully once we have learned to love at all, and this is something that man, for ex., must learn from woman; there is no doubt but that our love for a child or for a friend is merely a kind of makeshift solution, which is most clearly recognized as such by those who have found perfect happiness in sexual love; this is simply one feature of the multiplicity of human nature which allows a place even for abnormalities, abnormalities of the most ridiculous as of the most tragic kind. -
Enough of this! I make so bold as to send this confession of my faith to you in your solitude, without fear of depressing you by sharing my views with you. Not only you, but I, too, - like everyone else - now live in circumstances and conditions which force us to depend upon surrogate measures and makeshift solutions; for you, no less than for me, the truest, most real life can be only something imaginary, something we long for. I had reached the age of 36 before I divined the true reason for my creative impulse: until then I had regarded art as the end and life as a means to that end. But I made this discovery too late, with the result that my new instinct for life was bound to end in tragedy. By taking a broader view of today’s world, we can further see that love has now become wholly impossible; one of my friends could call upon the Germans, for ex., with total impunity: “you simply do not know what love is: how can people wish to love who have no initiative of character? - it is quite impossible!” - If it is a question, therefore, of seeking to save ourselves by means of some makeshift solution, I can find none better than a totally honest approach to the above-described state of affairs, and a frank admission of the truth, even if there be no other personal gain to be had from this than the pride of knowing the truth, and, ultimately, the will and the endeavour to pass on that knowledge to the rest of mankind and thus set them on the path that will lead to their redemption. In this way we are certainly working for the whole of mankind, but it is purely as a makeshift solution, since we know that it is not on his own that the individual can be happy, but only when the whole of mankind is happy, for only then may he, too, feel satisfied. You see that in this I share your point of view entirely, except that I regard this point of view not as an end in itself but simply as a means, as a way to achieve my goal: this goal, however, has not yet been recognized as such by the majority of people: but I have indicated above what I understand it to be; it is to render love possible as the most perfect realization of reality - truth; not a conceptual, abstract, non-sensuous love (the only kind possible now) but the love of “I” and “you”.
Thus I can regard the prodigious efforts of the human race, and hence of each and every present-day science, merely as ways and means whose goal in itself is so infinitely simple and yet so divine an outcome. Thus I respect every one of these exertions, and acknowledge that every step is necessary, rejoicing heartily when each new step is taken: I myself, however, have this simple goal so clearly in sight that I find it impossible to tear my eyes away from it in order to participate in this striving (which is basically unconscious of its goal): only the pressure of a great movement could bring about such an act of self-denial on my part; I shall welcome it, if and when it comes, as the sole means of redemption for me. - But will you now hold it against me if I simply shrug off with a smile your advice to abandon my dreams and egotistical fancies, and devote myself instead to what alone is real, life itself and its aspirations, and if I prefer to believe that I may devote myself to total reality much more decisively, more consciously and more immediately by applying every expression of my life, including the most anguished, solely to that goal and to publicizing it? You will, I hope, agree with me if, for ex., I deny “Robespierre” the tragic significance which he has hitherto had for you, or admit it only with considerable reservations. This type of character is so deeply unsympathetic to me because in none of the individuals who take after him can I find the least idea of what constitutes the true import of man’s striving since the time of our degeneracy from nature. What is tragic about Robespierre is really the unbelievable wretchedness which this man displayed when, having reached the goal of his ambitions, he stood there totally ignorant of what he should do with the power he had achieved. He only becomes tragic because he admits as much to himself and because he was destroyed by his inability to do anything or to bring any happiness to people’s lives. That is why I find his case the exact opposite of what you conceive it to be: he was not conscious of any higher purpose in the attainment of which he had recourse to unworthy means; no, it was in order to conceal his lack of any such purpose and his very real want of resource that he had recourse to the whole terrible machinery of the guillotine; for it has been shown that the “terreur” was manipulated purely as a means of governing and of maintaining power, without any real passion, but purely for political - i.e. ambitious and selfish reasons. And so this deeply pitiful man - who ended up having to make an ostentatious display of his tasteless “vertu” - really had no other aim than the means he adopted, as is always the case with purely political heroes who are quite justifiably destroyed by their own impotence, so that it is to be hoped that this entire class of men will soon disappear completely from history. - On the other hand, I remain convinced that my Lohengrin (according to my own conception of it) symbolizes the most profoundly tragic situation of the present day, namely man’s desire to descend from the most intellectual heights to the depths of love, the longing to be understood instinctively, a longing which modern reality cannot yet satisfy.
But I have held forth on this matter at sufficient length in my preface. All that remains for me to indicate here is what, given my present standpoint, I must now feel urged to do if I and the rest of mankind are to draw nearer the goal which I know has been set for mankind - but from which I, as an individual, must necessarily remain cut off as long as others continue to cut themselves off from it - without having recourse to means of which I can no longer avail myself. This is where my art must come to the rescue: and the work of art that I had no choice but to conceive in this sense is none other than my Nibelung poem. I am almost inclined to believe that it was less the lack of clarity of the present version of the poem than your own point of view (which you have adopted with such earnestness and which is really quite remote from my own) which is to blame for your failure to understand a number of points in it. Such errors are of course possible only in the case of a reader who is himself a creative artist and who recreates the work from within himself: whereas the naive individual assimilates the matter as it is, without any clear consciousness but at least with greater ease. For me my poem has only the following meaning: -
Depiction of reality in the sense indicated above. - Instead of the words: “a gloomy day dawns on the gods: in shame shall end your noble race, if you do not give up the ring!” I now make Erda say merely: “All that is - ends: a gloomy day dawns on the gods: I counsel you, shun the ring!” - We must learn to die, and to die in the fullest sense of the word; fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness, and this fear is generated only when love itself is already beginning to wane. How did it come about that a feeling which imparts the highest bliss to all living things was so far lost sight of by the human race that everything that the latter did, ordered and established was finally conceived only out of a fear of the end? My poem shows the reason why. It shows nature in all its undistorted truth and essential contradictions, contradictions which in their infinitely varied manifestations embrace even what is mutually repellent. But it is not the fact that Alberich was repulsed by the Rhine-daughters which is the definitive source of all evil - for it was entirely natural for them to repulse him; no, Alberich and his ring could not have harmed the gods unless the latter had already been susceptible to evil. Where, then, is the germ of this evil to be found? Look at the first scene between Wodan and Fricka - which leads ultimately to the scene in the 2nd act of the Valkyrie. The firm bond which binds them both, sprung from the involuntary error of a love that seeks to prolong itself beyond the stage of necessary change and to obtain mutual guarantees in contravention of what is eternally new and subject to change in the phenomenal world - this bond constrains them both to the mutual torment of a loveless union. As a result, the remainder of the poem is concerned to show how necessary it is to acknowledge change, variety, multiplicity and the eternal newness of reality and of life, and to yield to that necessity. Wodan rises to the tragic heights of willing his own destruction. This is all that we need to learn from the history of mankind: to will what is necessary and to bring it about ourselves. The final creative product of this supreme, self-destructive will is a fearless human being, one who never ceases to love: Siegfried. - That is all. - It may be added as a matter of detail that the pernicious power that poisons love is concentrated in the gold that is stolen from nature and put to ill use, the Nibelung’s ring: the curse that clings to it is not lifted until it is restored to nature and until the gold has been returned to the Rhine. This, too, becomes clear to Wodan only at the very end, once he has reached the final goal of his tragic career; in his lust for power, he had utterly ignored what Loge had so frequently and so movingly warned him of at the beginning of the poem; initially - thanks to Fafner’s deed - he learned to recognize the power of the curse; but not until the ring proves the ruin of Siegfried, too, does he see that only by restoring to the Rhine what had been stolen from its depths can evil be destroyed, and that is why he makes his own longed-for downfall a pre-condition of the extirpation of a most ancient wrong. Experience is everything. Not even Siegfried alone (man alone) is the complete “human being”: he is merely the half, only with Brünnhilde does he become the redeemer; one man alone cannot do everything; many are needed, and a suffering, self-immolating woman finally becomes the true, conscious redeemer: for it is love which is really “the eternal feminine” itself. - So much for the broadest and most general aspects of the poem: they contain within them all the individual and more specific details. -
I cannot but think that you have taken this to be my meaning: only it seems to me that you have placed more weight on the middle and intermediary links in this great chain than is due to them as such; it is as though you had to do so in order to justify your own preconceived interpretation of my poem. On the whole I am out of sympathy with the specific objections which you have levelled against any ostensible lack of clarity in individual episodes. On the contrary, I believe it was a true instinct that led me to guard against an excessive eagerness to make things plain, for I have learned to feel that to make one’s intentions too obvious risks impairing a proper understanding of the work in question; in drama - as in any work of art - , it is a question of making an impression not by parading one’s opinions but by setting forth what is instinctive. It is precisely this that distinguishes my poetic material from the political material which is virtually all that is current today. By insisting, for ex., that Wodan’s appearance in “Young Siegfried” should be invested with a greater sense of motivation than is at present the case, you risk destroying the intentional sense of instinctiveness in the development of the whole which I have been at pains to achieve. Following his farewell to Brünnhilde, Wodan is in truth no more than a departed spirit: true to his supreme resolve, he must now allow events to take their course, leave things as they are, and nowhere interfere in any decisive way; that is why he has now become the “Wanderer”: observe him closely! he resembles us to a tee; he is the sum total of present-day intelligence, whereas Siegfried is the man of the future whom we desire and long for but who cannot be made by us, since he must create himself on the basis of our own annihilation. In such a guise, Wodan - you must admit - is of extreme interest to us, whereas he would inevitably seem unworthy if he were merely a subtle intriguer, which is what he would be if he gave advice which was apparently meant to harm Siegfried but which in truth was intended to help not only Siegfried but, first and foremost, himself: that would be an example of deceit worthy of our political heroes, but not of my jovial god who stands in need of self-annihilation. See how he confronts Siegfried in the third act! Faced with the prospect of his own annihilation, he finally becomes so instinctively human that - in spite of his supreme resolve - his ancient pride is once more stirred, provoked moreover (mark this well!) by - his jealousy of Brünnhilde; for she it is who has become his most vulnerable spot. He refuses, so to speak, to be thrust aside, but prefers to fall - to be conquered: but even this is so little premeditated on his part that, in a sudden burst of passion, he even aspires to victory, a victory which - as he says - could only make him more wretched than ever. - In announcing my intentions I was obliged to keep within extremely narrow bounds in accordance with my own feelings on the matter: none the less, my hero should not leave behind the impression of a totally unconscious individual: on the contrary, in Siegfried I have tried to depict what I understand to be the most perfect human being, whose highest consciousness expresses itself in the fact that all consciousness manifests itself solely in the most immediate vitality and action: the enormous significance I attach to this consciousness — which can almost never be stated in words — will become clear to you from Siegfried’s scene with the Rhine-daughters; here we learn that Siegfried is infinitely wise, for he knows the highest truth, that death is better than a life of fear: he, too, knows all about the ring, but pays no heed to its power, because he has better things to do; he keeps it simply as a token of the fact that he has not learned the meaning of fear. You will admit that all the splendour of the gods must inevitably grow pale in the presence of this man. Above all, I am struck by your question why, since the Rhinegold is returned to the Rhine, the gods nevertheless perish? - I believe that, at a good performance, even the most naive spectator will be left in no doubt on this point. It must be said, however, that the gods’ downfall is not the result of points in a contract which can of course be interpreted and twisted and turned at will - for which one would need only the services of a legally qualified politician acting as a lawyer; no, the necessity of this downfall arises from our innermost feelings - just as it arises from Wodan’s feelings. Thus it was important to justify this sense of necessity emotionally, and this comes about as a matter of course providing only that the spectator follow the course of the entire action through each of its simple and natural motives, and that he follow it, moreover, from beginning to end with complete sympathy: when Wodan finally gives expression to this sense of necessity, he is merely repeating what we ourselves already deem to be necessary. When, at the end of the Rhinegold, Loge calls after the gods as they enter Valhalla: “They are hurrying to meet their end who think their might will last”, he is simply expressing our own feelings at this moment, for anyone who follows the prelude sympathetically, rather than hypercritically and analytically, and who allows the events to work upon his emotions will be bound to admit the truth of Loge’s remark. -
Let me now say something about Brünnhilde. This figure, too, you have misunderstood inasmuch as you find her refusal to hand over the ring to Wodan harsh and unyielding. Did you not feel that Brünnhilde has cut herself off from Wodan and all the other gods for the sake of - love, because - where Wodan clung to plans - she only - loved! Moreover, from the moment Siegfr. awakens her, she has no longer any other knowledge save that of love. Now - the symbol of this love - after Siegfried has left her - is the ring: when Wodan demands it back from her, all she can think of is the reason for having left Wodan (when she acted out of love), and there is only one thing that she now knows, namely that she had renounced her divinity for the sake of love. But she knows that love is uniquely divine: Valhalla’s splendour may fall in ruins, but she will not sacrifice the ring - (love - ). I ask you, would she not stand before us as pitiful, mean and common if she were to refuse to return the ring because she had learned (from Siegfried, say) of its magic spell and of the power of its gold? You cannot seriously believe such a thing of this glorious woman? — But if you shudder at the thought that this woman should cling to this accursed ring as a symbol of love, you will feel exactly as I intended you to feel, and herein you will recognize the power of the Nibelung curse raised to its most terrible and most tragic heights: only then will you recognize the need for the whole of the final drama, “Siegfried’s Death”. This is something we must experience for ourselves if we are to be made fully conscious of the evil of gold. Why does Brünnhilde yield so quickly to Siegfried when he comes to her in disguise? precisely because the latter has torn the ring from her finger, since it was here alone that her whole strength lay. The terrible and daemonic nature of this whole scene has escaped you entirely: a “stranger” passes - effortlessly - through the fire which, in accord with his destiny and our own experience, none but Siegfried should or could traverse: everything collapses at Br.’s feet, everything is out of joint; she is overpowered in a terrible struggle, she is “God-forsaken”. And it is Siegfried, moreover, who in fact orders her to share his couch with him - Siegfried whom she (unconsciously - and therefore all the more bewilderingly) almost recognizes, by his gleaming eye, in spite of his disguise. (You feel that something “inexpressible” is happening here, and so it is very wrong of you to ask me to speak out on the subject!)
Well, I have certainly allowed my pen to run away with me: indeed, the fear of that happening was the reason why I delayed writing. It worried me that you could have so totally misunderstood certain aspects. But it certainly made clear to me that only when completed could the work hope to avoid being misunderstood: having then been seized by a violent desire to begin the music, I cheerfully abandoned myself to that urge before finally starting this letter. The completion of the Rhinegold (a task as difficult as it was important) has restored my sense of self-assurance, as you can see. I have once again realized how much of the work’s meaning (given the nature of my poetic intent) is only made clear by the music: I can now no longer bear to look at the poem without music. In time I believe I shall be able to tell you about its composition. For now let me add merely that it has become a close-knit unity: there is scarcely a bar in the orchestra which does not develop out of preceding motifs. But it is impossible to explain this in a letter.
What you say with regard to completing and performing the whole has my complete support: you are fully aware of what is at issue here. I shall certainly heed your advice in everything. How I shall finally bring off a performance admittedly remains an enormous problem. But I shall tackle it when the time comes, since I can envisage no other aim that would be appropriate to my life. I am fairly certain that all the purely mechanical aspects of the enterprise can be brought off: but - my performers?! The very thought provokes a deep sigh from me. I must of course stick to young artists who have not already been totally ruined by our operatic stage: I am certainly not thinking of so-called “celebrities”. But I shall have to wait and see how best to train my young people; what I should like is to keep my troupe together for a year without allowing them to perform in public; during that time I would work with them every day, giving them both a humane and an artistic training and gradually allowing them to ripen into their task. Even under the most favourable conditions I could not count on a first performance before the summer of 1858. But no matter how long it takes, I continue to be attracted by the idea of giving myself a reason for living in the form of concentrated activity in pursuance of an object that is unique to me. As for the rest, I must remain deaf to all your advice concerning my life in general: there is nothing to be done here, where everything comes about of its own accord. Believe me, I have already contemplated “a life in the country”: two years ago I visited a hydropathic establishment with the intention of becoming a radically healthy human being; I was prepared to give up my art and everything else if only I could return to being a child of nature. My dear friend, how I was forced to laugh at this naive wish of mine, when I found myself on the verge of madness! None of us shall see the promised land: we shall all die in the wilderness. We are ripe for the madhouse, as the saying goes: we’ll never recover. Since life is as it now is, nature permits only abnormalities to thrive, at best we are forced to be martyrs; he who wishes to avoid this vocation in life thereby rails against the possibilities of his existence. I can no longer exist except as an artist: everything else - now that I can no longer encompass love and life - disgusts me, or else is of interest only inasmuch as it has a bearing on art. The result of course is a life of torment, but it is the only possible life. I may add in this context that I have had some strange experiences with my nerves: when I suffer pain (which is now my normal state), I am bound to regard my nerves as completely shattered: wondrous to tell, however, these nerves of mine have performed a wonderful service whenever the need has arisen, inspiring me with beautiful and apt ideas, so that I then experience a clearsightedness and an agreeable sensation of receptivity and creativity such as I have never previously known. Shall I then say that my nerves are shattered? No, I cannot. I see only that my normal condition - given the way my temperament has now developed - is a state of exaltation, whereas ordinary peace and quiet is its abnormal state. Indeed, I feel well only when I am “beside myself”: only then do I feel to be myself. - If Göthe was different, I do not envy him for it, just as I have no wish to change places with anyone else, not even Humboldt, whom you consider a genius, an opinion I cannot share. In the final analysis, I am sure you feel as I do: for I do not suppose you would change places with anyone, and you would perhaps be right not to do so - at least you have my sincere admiration.
I am not so out of touch with nature as you suppose, even though I myself am no longer in a position to have scientific dealings with it. In these matters I look to Herwegh, who is also living here and who for some time now has been engaged in a most thorough study of nature: through this friend of mine I have learned some of the most beautiful and important things about nature, which influences me on many vital points. It is only when nature is expected to replace real life - love - that I ignore it. In this respect I resemble Brünnhilde with the ring. I would rather perish or be denied all enjoyment than renounce my belief.
You must not think me ungrateful if I respond to your advice in this way: how could I not be grateful to you for the love which inspires that advice? You see, it gives me infinite delight: I cannot tell you how deeply it touches me. This emotion is equalled only by my admiration for you, for your strength - and, at the same time, for your tenderness of spirit. If there is any one thing I should most care to learn it is that you had completed the work which you wrote to tell me about. Is it possible? What do you need to be able to do so? Tell me precisely what it is, in case I can be of help. - Have you not heard anything from the publisher Avenarius in Leipzig? Unfortunately, he is the only person I thought I might be able to influence, since my dealings with my own publishers have always been through a third party, and totally unsatisfactory at that. I wrote to him immediately after receiving your last letter and asked him to contact you directly with possible commissions and so on. In spite of a renewed appeal, I have still not received an answer from him.(?) I really do not know what to send you now that would interest you: I myself have now lost the habit of reading. But as soon as I find anything, I shall let you know. - My Tannhäuser is now being given almost everywhere in Germany; the smaller theatres, especially, have had a go at it, whereas the largest ones - for obvious reasons - are still holding back. As for the performances themselves, I hear for the most part that they are wretched affairs, so that I cannot understand where people’s pleasure lies: since I cannot see them, I have grown indifferent to this prostitution of my works, except for the recent performance of Lohengrin in Leipzig, which left a most painful impression on me: it is said to have been unprecedentedly bad; among other things it was impossible to hear a single word - except for the herald - all evening! - As a result I have come to regret ever having released my works. In Boston they are now even holding Wagner Nights, evening concerts at which nothing but my own compositions are performed. I have been encouraged to go to America; but no one can expect me to tour around giving concerts, not even for a good deal of money! -
And now, my dearest friend, I shall come to an end. If necessary I could fill a whole ream of paper; I’d have no shortage of material: but we must keep something back for another occasion. I hope that - if you are able - you will not keep me waiting as long for a letter as I kept you waiting for an answer. Write and tell me, above all, about what you are working on. Anything I may have forgotten can be included then. For now - fare you well, my dear and worthy friend! Do not lose hope - for even I have not lost hope.
Yours,
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 171