I have just got back from Penzing. A glorious day, sun, everything wonderfully green, a peaceful garden, beautiful apartment - how wretched I felt! - Only now I am completely worn-out! - Friendly servants, an honest couple with pleasant, gentle faces, - they come with the apartment. And everything new! a fresh start: nothing familiar, none of the sweetness of well-known objects around me! Is it to be here then? - My child, you no longer feel loneliness as I do! I am quite ill with it. - And the sun? with you it shines on a sad and lonely man! — Oh — !! help is needed here, a further attempt must be made to regain my stability - do not begrudge me my flattering attempts to have you here with me, - here rather than there! -
God knows how deep your bourgeois bigotry goes - : but, what if your entire family with all your aunts were to move here? - Yes, indeed! another Russian campaign is called for, and so I am offering you the equally beautiful ground-floor apartment in my house.
Your family will run my household. And then? What do your aunts say to that? - Ah! get away with you!! You are all quite pitiful - the lot of you! Quite pitiful! You must be prepared to take risks with a man like Wagner!
The next day.
I was interrupted: the night brought with it a great sense of weariness. I have slept. - Oh, what poor material we are for the world daemon! In me I recognize Ananda and the Buddha, in you Savitri, the Chandala girl of my “Victors”. One must be and become everything oneself: that is how I create my art! Whom do I profit thereby? Ultimately - ourselves alone. That is something we shall have to see about! -
Oh, my child, your letters were too wonderful for words! They were written by an angel. I simply cannot bear to think of them, - you dear, sweet thing! Do not leave me! Do not float away from me! [...] Write to me as often as you can! Especially now: do you hear? Every day! - I would be quite capable of abandoning myself totally to my emotions, of bearing every injury & expense, and of coming to see you now, were my one overwhelming desire not for - rest! - Oh, my child, I am 50! Love knows only one desire now, that of my flying Dutchman: calm after the storm. - But, in view of the way you are made, I have not given up hope of achieving this aim with you in one form or another. -
Fare you well! I am oppressed on every side. For my birthday I shall send you some large & splendid photographs of myself. I shall celebrate it entirely on my own. Yesterday the gardener showed me some rose-bushes which he had bought for me; I burst into tears, and felt only sadness on seeing them. -
But! Patience! It will all soon be different, but, however fate wills it, things can only get better!
Adieu, my darling!
Yours,
R.W.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 286