I shall now be remaining here until the end of the month, simply in order to complete my poem - without any new interruptions. When I reached the end of the first act, I intended only to wait for Schott’s letter before setting out for Wiesbaden without delay, where I planned to settle down for a longer period of time. In my impatience, I finally began the second act; Schott’s letter arrived and did not exactly thrill me with its sense of urgency. And so I am now amusing myself with my verses, and have finally succeeded in forgetting how wretched I am. I also have a horror of setting out again so soon in the dead of winter to visit yet another foreign country: and so I have today come to the decision to spend the rest of the winter in Berlin with the Bülows. I cannot survive any longer without a friendly soul beside me. - Then - are you still listening? - Then, at the end of the coming spring, I plan to have a closer look at Wiesbaden. Nor can I survive unless I settle down somewhere in a place of my own: this much is equally clear to me. I am now completely set on the Rhine: neutral. At the same time I ask for somewhere cheap, and a comfortable, pleasant apartment. The rest - including how I shall survive - I leave our Dear Lord to determine. But I shall never again go into service. - I come now to my main point: -
My friend, you must come and live with me, once and for all! -
Think it over! I have already thought it over.
As far as I am concerned, the matter is settled. If I have not yet got to the bottom of what a uniquely true and supreme profit life can yield, I must be a hardened sinner indeed. A friend, a highly prolific individual who is his own master, and yet at the same time someone who is utterly sympathetic to me. Anyone who could misjudge such a friend would not be worthy of him.
Hans has often refused to believe how deeply attached I am to him. But there are difficulties with the good fellow! - And you are free - and, as I believe I may assume, you are likely to remain so. If I now ask you to come and live with me as soon as I am settled in again, it goes without saying that this will in no way pre-ordain the future. It is enough that one thinks involuntarily of eternity. I take this to mean that you will belong to me, as my wife does, and that we shall share everything equally together, be it good fortune or failure, everything as a matter of course. If ever ambition moves you, well then, may the devil take you: there is no alternative!
Do not misunderstand me - you’ll do what you can, as I shall; but always like two people who really belong to each other like a married couple. It will all work out for the best. If Wiesbaden, for ex., does not appeal to you, we can consider somewhere else. Ultimately my luck is bound to improve, and you will contribute to its doing so. But I believe that you, too, will meet with success. And if not? What does it matter? At all events we shall have each other. -
And so my immediate hope is that we shall see each other at the beginning of the summer on the Rhine, which is really where your home is. - Right then! Think it over! -
God, how I should like to have the poor doll there, too! In such matters my sense of morality is incurably naive. I should certainly have no objection to the girl’s coming here, especially if the pretty little thing were to be what she is capable of being for me. - But how shall I find the right “terminus socialis”? Heavens above! - I am sorry, though I can’t help but smile! -
My wife is well; she seems to be recovering and is behaving like a good, sensible girl. Ultimately it is all innate, and the poor woman, who in many respects is totally remote from me, is so bound up with my fate through the misery of her life that I cannot think of spending my old age in tolerable comfort without including her in my plans. And so she could and, indeed, may very well be living with us, too: you’ll have an uncommonly salutary effect upon her. I hope so at least!
What a wonderful letter you sent me. No one else has ever written to me like that before. Thank you for everything. As for the melodrama in Heiling, you repeated exactly my own early impressions of it: even at that date I regretted that it was placed at such a dramatically stupid and ineffectual point in the work.
My thanks to the Standhartners for Christmas Eve!
You can simply have no idea of my poem: I cannot work on it without growing shamelessly arrogant (how right you are!). It will be my most brilliant creation: I shall say no more. I may shortly write out certain passages from it and send them to you. Merciful heavens! If only I had a nest in which to hatch this brood at leisure! - Learn from my example, and come to stay with me once I have another nest! Look! I have written operas and have been successful, I am famous, indeed honoured and loved by many, and - here I sit, and no one cares a fig for me. Five, six days go by without my speaking to anyone except my waiter! And those are the good days: for only then do I work, go out late, dine at the restaurant, come home, and read or write letters. That is what I am doing today. Here’s one for you, the next one will be another doll’s letter. Then my best wishes to the Standhartners.
Do I hear nothing more from Vienna? Well, it will no doubt not be good news. Adieu my friend, you kind and deep man! Fare well and remember me with affection!
Your Richard.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 274