[...] Our love, my sweet prince! - so wondrous and unheard-of, what happiness it must bring to the world. Now that I can collect my thoughts with ever greater calm and devotion, I am seeking to fathom the task which we must solve. What was once bound to fill my heart with despair when I recognized and witnessed it I may now recall with an eagerness full of hope in order that, on the strength of what I have recognized, I may clearly and distinctly define the aim of our efforts, an aim which I now know to be solvable. While weaving the feathery garment of sound of those woodbirds which speak so clearly to Siegfried I think of presenting my life’s beloved hero with a lesson gleaned from an experience of the world which has been bought at the price of manifold sufferings, and of bringing it to his attention in the form that it has now assumed in my mind, - in the shimmering light of a solemn, devotional hope. I may now speak the language of these communications, for what has happened between us constrains me to prophetic clarity and an unerring proclamation of what my hero now can hear, since - he hears it of his own accord. He is like Siegfried with the woodbird. Twice he listens: but the first time he hears only the melody; he would fain understand the sense of that melody, too: how should he set about doing so? He accomplishes a mighty deed: he slays Fafner. What is the use of this tremendous deed? Behold! he now understands the sense of the birdsong, too. Before him is revealed, in all its clarity, the meaning of his deed, his power, the proclamation of his high-born bride. Thus I proclaim to my life’s dear Siegfried the sense of the act of his love for me, his power: his awakening of the high-born bride: Germany - is his Brünnhilde! - I sing the song which awakens this bride. It is a serious, solemn song: and yet dear and heartfelt. It is the thoughtful word of the “German spirit”. -
The notes jotted down during recent days expatiate upon this serious theme, and provide, as it were, the text to many a melody which has already forced its way into my beloved’s heart. Unless you find it tiresome, I shall continue, and elaborate the theme over many more pages. In this way I shall be somewhat more reconciled to having been so long deprived of your most earnestly longed-for company! -
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 334