My dear, kind and honoured friend,
I doubt whether this letter will reach you in Mariafeld, but I assume that it will be forwarded to you. I am really only writing to stop you from coming to think of me as ungrateful. It was with you that I had to endure the terrible throes of child-birth that led to my present good fortune, and it was you who were my midwife: we saw and felt only the distress and anguish of this birth; and it may well be that for mothers, too, it is a process of life and death in which all thought of what is to be born fades completely away, and pain remains the only reality. Yet I scarcely know how I could have survived all this and how, finally, without any visible hope ahead of me, I could have been capable of taking my leave of you in what I can only describe as a composed and bearable frame of mind, had I not been conscious in my heart of hearts that, by virtue of my unspeakable sufferings, I had at least acquired a superior right, an entitlement which, even if it had not been acknowledged by the world, would have raised me far, far above the world and thus, even in the depths of my misery, would have made me inwardly a hallowed and blessed human being.
[...]
Do not doubt this for a moment, my dear. It is this good fortune which alone accords with all the sufferings I have had to bear, including the utmost misery. I feel that even if it had never come, I would still have been worthy of it: and this gives me the certainty that it will last. But if, in addition, you desire confirmation that this good fortune, too, is of divine provenance, you shall hear it forthwith. In the year that “Tannhäuser” was first performed (the work with which I first embarked upon a course that was as novel as it was fraught with difficulty), and in the very month (August) when I felt so immensely creative that I conceived both “Lohengrin” and the “Mastersingers” at one and the same time, a mother gave birth to my guardian angel.
At the very time when I was completing my “Tristan” in Lucerne, when I was making untold efforts to secure my return to German soil (Baden), and had finally turned in despair to Paris, in order to wear myself out in enterprises repugnant to my nature, - it was then that the 15-year-old youth first attended a performance of my “Lohengrin”, a performance which affected him so deeply that from that moment onwards he based his own education upon a study of my works and writings, with the result that, as he openly admits to those around him, and now admits to me, it is I who have really been his one and only mentor and teacher. He followed my career and my troubles, my adversities in Paris, my starvation in Germany, and came to cherish but one desire, that he might gain the power to give me proof of his supreme love. One care, however, consumed the youth, his inability to persuade the dullards around him to take the necessary interest in me. At the beginning of March this year - I know the day well - it became clear to me that every attempt to remedy the hopelessness of my situation had been a failure: everything that befell me with such awful and degrading inevitability I saw approaching with open and helpless despair. Then - totally unexpectedly - the King of Bavaria died, and filled with compassion - and in the face of destiny - my guardian angel ascended the throne. Four weeks later, his first concern was to send for me: while I, in despite of the help you were able to offer in easing my pain, was draining my cup of sorrow to its very last drop, his emissary was already looking for me in my abandoned apartment in Penzing; he had to take his affectionate monarch a pencil, a pen of mine. - How and when he finally found me you already know. - My dear, there is no doubt about it: - this was it, and this is it! - Ah! at last a love-affair that brings neither sorrow nor suffering! What it means to me to see this glorious youth before me! For my birthday he gave me the beautiful oil painting for which he had sat especially for me. This wonderful portrait has taught me how I can prove to others that I have “genius”: here, look at it, here before you, you can see my “genius” with your very own eyes! -
A close friend of the King assured me that he believed that the only reason why the young man was so serious and strict in his handling of the affairs of government was that he did not wish to fall under alien influence, but to retain complete freedom for himself and, certain and secure of his power, to be able to live, in total independence, for his love for me. He is fully conscious of who I am and of what I need: I did not have to waste a word in describing my position to him. He feels a King’s power ought to suffice to protect me from all that is base, to leave me wholly free for my Muse, and to provide me with all the resources I need to perform my works, when and as I wish. He spends most of his time at present in a small castle near here; his carriage takes me there in 10 minutes. He sends for me once or twice a day. I then fly to him as to a lover. He is delightful company. This urge for instruction, this gift of understanding, this trembling and warming to each new subject is something that it has never before been my lot to experience so utterly unreservedly. And then his tender solicitude for me, his enchanting chastity of heart, of his every expression as he assures me how happy he is to possess me; thus we sit for hours on end, lost in each other’s gaze. He does not boast about me: we are complete unto ourselves. If I wanted - or so I am told - the whole Court would be open to me, but he would not understand me if I desired to play some ambitious role there. It is all so beautiful and all so genuine. How easy it is for me now to exert a calming influence on every side: no one minds me, and I interfere with no one; all the things that we both inwardly despise go their own way in peace; we do not worry our heads about them. Everyone will come to love me in time; even now the young King’s immediate entourage is happy to discover and know the sort of man I am, for they can all see that my immense influence upon the prince’s mind can lead only to the common good, and can be to no one’s disadvantage. And so everything within us and around us grows better and more beautiful by the day! -
This is my good fortune, my friend! Can you doubt but that it is the right thing for me? The right thing, yes - it must be the right thing: you shall now see how long it lasts, and how everything prospers. Cast aside your doubts! -
If there is one thing in my life which has made me inconsolably sad and ill-humoured, it is a characteristic of the “world” against which the likes of us are powerless to act. It is the philistine’s conceited belief in his own “practical wisdom”, and his often - sweetly smiling - assumption that it is he who is uniquely clever and wise, in contrast to those rare and profound individuals whose minds he himself cannot fathom. This appalling cleverness, this absurd abstemiousness in grasping and valuing the things of this life, which now and then triumphs even over the madcap visionary, degenerates, in contrast to those who are genuinely more profound, into what is strictly speaking an animal instinct for discovering only what is useful and necessary at the moment in question; since the man whose mind is more profound frequently overlooks what is immediately necessary (an omission which is often intentional, lest it obscure his broader vision of things), he seems, to those who pride themselves upon their practical intelligence, to be lacking in sense and utterly unintelligible. Well, we shall no doubt have to put up with it if the world which we understand well enough does not understand us, but takes the liberty of pitying our unpractical nature. If, however, this same situation is transferred to the realm of morality, and if the philistine regards himself as uniquely moral simply because he has not the first idea what true morality is nor the least feeling for it, we shall find it difficult to remain tolerant towards him and to retain our sense of irony in conceding that we are right: but if a woman loses all her instinct for love to the extent that she judges, pities - and admonishes the object of her love from the standpoint of her own moral philistinism, then her attitude will become unbearable. It was my punitive fate to mar and spoil my own wife to such an extent, as a result of excessive tolerance on my part, that she finally lost the basis on which to do me any kind of justice. The consequence of this was all too plain. I do not wish to incur any blame for causing a similar estrangement between myself and our friend from the Enge by similarly spoiling her: I would believe that I wished only to play with her if I did not make her feel the injustice of what she is doing to me and of what she has so often done to me. I am returning her childish little letter to you: no one will have a better opportunity than you, my dear, to inform her that the most shameful adversities which befell me made me neither angry nor bad so that her childish exhortation to me to be good is meaningless. -
My last letter, had she not refused it, could have taught her otherwise, and corrected her view of me: it was my final letter to her, a hallowed letter. It remains so, in spite of the good fortune which has so suddenly overtaken me: for it concerned my very being, which fortune cannot alter, and if she had understood it, she would also have realized that I already bore that good fortune within me. - Let her now strive to rediscover me: she had me once and knew me; that she could lose me and misjudge me I can - understand, but not forgive. Let her atone for what she has done! For she means too much to me for me to play with her. -
Where are you now, my dear? Will you write again soon? I am utterly alone here: I miss having people in the house, but perhaps I shall get Cornelius to come. Shall I be able to renounce the “eternal feminine” completely? Sighing deeply, I tell myself that I ought to wish that I could! - A glance at his dear portrait helps me again! Ah, the dear young boy! I suppose he must now be everything to me; world, wife and child! A thousand sincere good wishes!
Ever yours,
RW.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 300