[...] On the day of my departure I had to spend some time with Ollivier at the Palais de justice: I walked up and down there for an hour in the Salle des pas perdus with advocates dressed in cap and gown, explaining Tannhäuser to them at their request, an explanation which they received with great warmth. Altogether, it has been a most salutary experience, not least as a result of my observations this time in Paris: people like me very much! This may be because of my incredible outspokenness and self-abandon in all that I say, so that, given their common attitude to life, people can respond only with an almost apprehensive concern which more or less expresses their belief that such a man as I, who thinks so little of himself but only of the object that absorbs him, must necessarily have to put up with a great deal of suffering, which invites them to feel compassionate towards me, a sentiment that is very close to love. In consequence, the admiration which great artists inspire is almost entirely lacking with me; for pre-eminent and exceptional talents are similarly lacking in me. I have only the bond that concentrates more ordinary gifts into a single forceful action, so that, when this action finally ensues, these gifts of mine produce things that are technically beyond the individual talent. This, I believe, is total self-oblivion, obliviousness to the world around me, complete absorption by the object in question, an object which must be vast and profound simply because any lesser object could not produce this effect upon me. This was brought home to me by Berlioz, who is my opposite in this respect. This man undoubtedly has all the gifts of genius, without its spirit, which is the bond of which I spoke. He sees only the detail of his subject before him, and is significant because of his ability to master this detail in such a lively fashion. He read me his libretto, and in doing so increased my concern for him to the extent that I almost hope I may never meet him again, since my distress at not being able to help a friend would finally become painfully unbearable. This libretto is clearly the pinnacle of his misfortune, for nothing else can ever come near it. To see this unfortunate fabrication (which is bound to strike every listener as such) regarded by him as the ultimate and finest achievement of his artistic career, a career to which he intends to sacrifice everything since he means this to be his final work, is bound to fill me with more than a sense of sadness. The way he recited the text was significant; he read it very effortfully, with strong emphasis and with a great show of enthusiasm, but without ever revealing the least sign of any real enthusiasm, so that his delivery often reminded me of bad actors who have been given the wrong role to play. There was no sense of passion, apart from the obstinacy of his outlook which, in turn, nowhere appeared truly sure of itself. I had great difficulty explaining to him my painful bemusement at the curious nature of the whole thing, which I did by expressing doubts and misgivings about individual details; but it is never possible to make oneself understood in this way, if the work as a whole has to be spared from criticism. I left with a feeling of great sorrow, but at least he spared me the possible embarrassment of my having to tell him how I felt since, for his own part, he never shows any genuine interest or fellow-feeling: I do not think he knows what love is; that is the key to the tormenting riddle of his nature. And so it is hard for his friends to satisfy him. He places us in the embarrassing position of having to deceive ourselves and, ultimately, the world as well, lest we destroy his illusions about himself and about us: it is clear at a glance that any attempt to disillusion him would immediately bring about a breach and the loss of his friendship, for there has never been anyone in the world to whom he might be capable of sacrificing himself and his outlook. In certain circumstances, and if one remains completely silent, one may well resolve to leave the world to its illusions simply by being silent, but it is more difficult to try to delude oneself, and this elaborate exercise is one that is totally repugnant to me; but since there is no other way of preserving Berlioz’s delusions about himself, I can only hope that I never again find myself in the painful position of having to serve a friend in this way. God, what a blessing is my relationship with Liszt by contrast! I freely admit that I believe that the highest ideal attainable in life is to be able to be boundlessly true and honest. Every relationship that I value has this meaning for me, and I measure the extent of its value simply by whether I feel I can be outspokenly honest or not; whereas the greatest torment I know consists in having to leave people in a state of uncertainty about me, if not by dissembling to them, at least by self-restraint; and it is this sense of compulsion that characterizes all our relationships in life, for the only gift that nature has given us is the gift of reason as a defence mechanism with which to deceive others. Indeed, the constant growth of my friendship for Liszt is based almost solely on an increasing lack of constraint in our honesty and outspokenness towards each other; love is a prime requirement here, but so, too, with natures like our own, are intellectual breadth and constitutional productiveness, for it is only as a result of these qualities that love gains that undaunted power which, in the case of paltry intellects, inevitably soon falls short. And so, with us, the one complements the other; where we appear to differ utterly, it needs only total honesty in order to produce an immediate understanding. You are therefore quite right to idolize our friendship: you will not soon see its like again. -
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 206