Many thanks, my dearest friend, for your very beautiful and full letter! Never before can anyone have contemplated and characterized as well as you have done the significant and uniquely important possibility of a political development of the European peoples. Your Roman idea struck me as wholly admirable, and I immediately set about thinking how I could best contribute to its realization! - My dearest Malwida, this much is certain, that the myth of a Messiah is the most profoundly characteristic of all myths for all our earthly striving. The Jews expected someone who would liberate them, a Messiah who was supposed to restore the kingdom of David and bring not only justice but, more especially, greatness, power and safety from oppression. Well, everything went as predicted, his birth in Bethlehem, of the line of David, the prophecy of the three wise men, etc., his triumphant welcome to Jerusalem, palms strewn before him, etc. - there he stood, everyone listened, and he proclaimed to them: “My kingdom is not of this world! Renounce your desires, that is the only way to be redeemed and freed!” - Believe me, all our political freedom fighters strike me as being uncannily like the Jews. - All right, this is something one can say to only a very few people: that goes without saying, and so - let us see what happens! - but I fully recognize the particular charms of Italy. - Your plans to settle in Florence are highly respectable! - Everything is possible with someone like me! I no longer like to plan more than a month in advance. There is no doubt but that all I want & all I look for in this world is the leisure to work, since this alone can explain my existence to me and make it seem acceptable. I can renounce performances entirely. But trying to secure this leisure is what is so appallingly difficult. I am working in private on a plan to disappear from the face of the earth and continue only to work on my artistic projects in secret like some departed spirit. I shall otherwise not find rest. My wife is again in a pitiful state and causing me quite unbelievable distress: it is utterly impossible to make her see reason; she is bound to destroy herself, irredeemably - it’s heart-breaking! -
Of course, I am thinking of staying here as long as I can afford to do so for the sake of my work. It is making progress and is turning out a success, - but I cannot work quickly: firstly because of the unavoidable outer and inner distractions, then - because there is not a single bar of the music that delights me or gives me pleasure unless it owes its origins to a genuinely inspired idea. But this sort of thing cannot be made to order. -
Klindworth’s letter reached me safely while I was still in Paris. Tell him not to worry, if you have an opportunity to see him. There was not much I could add to the unfortunate incident, which I already knew about. I hope he emerges unscathed. Give him my warmest good wishes, and tell him where I am!
Kindest regards to Olga! Perhaps - in Italy: everything is possible: only at present have I no time to make any plans, and am glad if I can guarantee even the next month of my existence.
And so, once again: a thousand thanks! Please accept my warmest good wishes from the very bottom of my heart!
Yours,
Rich. Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 279