Our letters crossed in the post: yours arrived just after I had posted mine! -
I have been on my own for some time now. Karl Ritter left me to visit his sick mother and to wish her well on her birthday. When he went, I was just on the point of recovering from an illness which had interrupted me in the work I had but recently begun. I promised that by the time he got back I should have completed another large section of Tristan. But once again I had to consent to remaining in my room - and, as a result of an injury to the outside of my leg, I was on this occasion even confined to my chair, in which I had to have myself carried to bed. This lasted more or less until now; only within the last day or so have I been out again by gondola. I am telling you this tale of woe by way of introducing the information that never for a moment have I lost my patience but that, although I have had to abandon my work again, I have kept my mind constantly active and unclouded. During this time I saw no one save my doctor, Louisa - my donna di servente, who looked after me very well and bandaged me up, - and Pietro, who had to heat the room a good deal, bring me my meals and, in the morning and at night, with the help of a gondolier, carry me on my chair out of and into bed - a process I always called a “traghetto”, accompanying it with a loud shout of “poppeh”, which people regularly call out in Venice. Louisa and Pietro were always surprised and pleased to find me in such a good humour; one thing they particularly liked was my explanation of why I had such difficulty conversing with them, which I told them was because they had a Venetian dialect, whereas I spoke and understood only pure Tuscan. -
On one occasion I was visited by a good-natured highly cultivated and intelligent man, a Prince Dolgorucki; I was pleased when he came, but even more pleased when he went away again. I feel perfectly content not to be entertained and distracted. - Nor did I do much reading; in any event I read very little at times like this. But I had W. v. Humboldt’s letters sent to me; they were not especially satisfying, indeed, I found it difficult to read much of them. I already knew the best bits in an abridged version: four lines of them were preferable, I thought, to all the rest with its diffuseness and lack of clarity. No doubt you can guess which four lines I mean? -
I am more interested in Schiller, and am now reading him with uncommon pleasure: it was difficult for Göthe to hold his own beside this uncommonly sympathetic type. What a passion for knowledge there is here! You would think this man had never existed, but that he was always on the look-out for intellectual light and warmth. His poor health apparently did not stand in his way: and during his years of maturity he seems to have been totally free of any overwhelming moral afflictions. Things seem to have been quite tolerable for him. And then there was so much for him to know, knowledge that was difficult to acquire at a time when Kant had left so much that was unclear, indeed, it was particularly hard for a poet, since the latter wishes to be perfectly clear in his ideas, too. One thing is missing in all these men: music! But they felt it as a need, as a presentiment. This often finds quite clear expression in their writings, notably in their extremely felicitous substitution of a contrast between “visual” and “musical” poetry for the one between “epic” and “lyric”. With music, however, a position of omnipotence has now been achieved in contrast to which the poets of that wonderfully questing and aspiring age of evolutionary change produced works that are merely sketches. But that is why I feel so close to them: they are my living heirloom. Yet they were happy - happier without music! A concept cannot cause suffering; but in music every concept turns into a feeling; it consumes and burns till it becomes a bright flame, and the new and wondrous light can laugh out loud! -
I then studied a good deal of philosophy and reached conclusions which complement and correct my friend Schopenhauer. But I prefer to ruminate on such matters rather than to write them down. On the other hand, poetic projects are again crowding into my mind in a most lively fashion. Parzival has preoccupied me very much: in particular, there is a curious creature, a strangely world-demonic woman (the messenger of the grail) who strikes me with increasing vitality and fascination. If ever I manage to write this poem, I am sure to produce something very original. But I simply cannot imagine how long I shall have to remain alive if I am ever to realize all my plans. If I were really attached to life, I might suppose that all these many projects would guarantee me a really long life. But it won’t necessarily happen. - Humboldt reports that Kant planned to elaborate a whole series of ideas in greater detail, but that his death, at a ripe old age, naturally prevented him from doing so. -
I notice on this occasion a quite fatalistic resistance even to the completion of Tristan; but this cannot persuade me to work any faster. On the contrary, I compose as though I had no plans to work on anything else for the rest of my life. By way of compensation, it will be more beautiful than anything I have yet done; the smallest phrase takes on the meaning of an entire act, so carefully do I execute it. And while on the subject of Tristan, I must tell you how happy I am at having received a first copy of the newly printed poem in time to send it to you as a gift. -
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 228