Dear Sir,
I owe you a more detailed reply to various communications on your part which were as pleasing to me as they were valuable. Given the important subject matter with which we are dealing I cannot seek to excuse this delay by appealing to my indisposition and resultant disinclination to face each and every form of undertaking; but I may perhaps adduce it in order to explain the fact that I was unable to follow up the need I felt to reply to your confidential approach in the requisite manner and to the extent that I would otherwise have desired, which was why I omitted even to inform you of my resolve.
My intention - as long as you yourself, my dear Sir, have no objection - is to discuss the various questions which are of mutual concern to us, at least as far as these questions can be of mutual concern, i.e. as far as I may consider myself qualified and justified in expressing my thoughts on such matters, and to discuss them, moreover, in a generally stimulating manner in a short series of open letters to you. I can achieve my desired aim here only if I succeed, as I have every prospect of doing, in persuading the Allgemeine Zeitung to accept my articles, since we have no doubt all learnt from experience that only newspaper articles are still heeded by the public. I feel impelled to undertake this task since I should first like to clarify my own thoughts on the underlying trend of certain enterprises before I embark upon them; but I also realize how necessary it is to attempt in this way to find confederates and sympathizers among those of the nation’s scattered intellectuals who share my aims, men whom I can reach only in this way since they are otherwise wholly unknown to me. It would be my aim to encourage these intellectuals to think seriously about the matter, and to prepare them to the extent that, at a given moment, they may be capable of responding, in a well-prepared manner, to a practical appeal to join in certain enterprises. My singular experiences in Bavaria have in fact convinced me that, without a serious and conjoint offensive on the part of like-minded confederates against so well-organized a phalanx of vulgar and corrupting elements, even the most favourable prospects of achieving great ends - if based purely on personality - will in fact achieve nothing, especially if those ends are, alas, as novel as ours. But since the success of my articles can be advantageous to our cause and harmful to our enemy only if I take care to give the most moderate and discreet account of all purely personal aspects of the matter, and to show the most sparing regard in every respect, my reason for communicating with you today is to place at your disposal - in all confidence - the data which you will need to gain a more conscious sense of direction in the matter of my extraordinary relationship with the young King of Bavaria, so that you may understand how indispensable it must seem to me to abandon my strangely isolated position. Since I may assume that you are already familiar with most of what is generally known, as a result of the numerous frank and true accounts of recent “state” events in Munich which have been reported in the liberal press, I believe that for the rest, too, it will be sufficient for me to give you only the following brief description. - I continue to regard the youthful King Ludwig as having quite uncommon abilities, as you yourself would be convinced at the very first sight of his highly striking physiognomy. But the great question now is how the qualities necessary to govern will develop within him. An unbelievably senseless education has succeeded in arousing in the youth a profound and hitherto utterly insurmountable aversion to all serious preoccupation with the affairs of state; contemptuously dismissive of all concerned, he simply leaves such matters to be dealt with, as though out of a sense of disgust, by existing officials in accord with existing routine. His family and the entire Court are repugnant to him, he hates everything to do with the army and military life, finds the nobility risible, and despises the great mass of the people; on the priesthood he is clear-sighted and unprejudiced, and in the matter of religion serious and intense. There is only one way to arouse his sympathetic faculties, and that is through me, my works and my art, which he regards as the true, actual world, whereas everything else seems to him to be insubstantial nonsense. Contact with this one element arouses within him the most surprising and truly wondrous abilities; he sees and feels things with astounding certainty and reveals a will to achieve the most far-reaching of my artistic goals, a will which, for as long as it lasts, comprises the man’s entire being. I then see before me the most wondrous success ever accorded an artist, and feel rapture and extreme anxiety at one and the same moment! So charming and, indeed, so engaging an ignorance of real life must, as you can well imagine, involve the royal youth in conflicts which, in more pressing circumstances, drive him into open displays of weakness. Since people can get round him only by referring to me, they were able to effect my removal only by pretending that it was his love for me which had brought me into the utmost danger. In the end I could not, for my own part, avoid pointing out to him the seriousness of his royal duties: in this direction, too, there was only one way of achieving any success, and that was to bring into play his love for me. In his eagerness to serve me, he acted with such blind enthusiasm that he even had the sketches of my diary (with which you yourself are in part familiar) copied out and distributed among his various ministries so that the ideas therein contained could be “put into practice”. I do not need tell you of the almost comical confusion to which this gave rise! All that now remains for me to discover is how far his sheer understanding of the world can be sharpened and strengthened. I have been quite pitiless in telling him my opinion of his officials, ministers etc; he accepts all I say, and hopes and promises to control his opponents and enemies, but he still does not appear in any way to have reached the point of thinking seriously about what I have said to him, and thus of forming a true verdict concerning those people and things which are obviously governing him at present. As for my wish that he should summon you to Munich, he did not so much as mention it in his reply, but, in general terms, only reconfirmed his intention of placing everything in my hands when the moment is right. The vagueness of his demeanour makes me afraid of seeing him fall into some very real weakness of character. I can now see quite clearly that reason and remonstrations are of no avail, and that ultimately only one means of influencing him continues to remain open to me, namely my art - which influences his ideas, and his love for me - which influences his will. You will see therefore that this quite unique relationship of ours contains within itself, in the most incomparable way, a prefiguration of the means whereby I may influence Germany, inasmuch as Germany, too, is not to be got round by rational means. The fact that, through my art, I am in a position here to render a King lucid and fully clairvoyant who is otherwise incapable of properly appreciating the most everyday aspects of real life; that I may hope to persuade this same King to embrace the grandest and most far-reaching resolves and actions because of his inspired love for me - this must fill me, in my exalted mood, with a well-nigh momentous presentiment of the spirit and manner in which I might yet be called upon to influence Germany itself. I am too experienced to indulge in any vain and cosy self-deception in this matter. This much, however, is now clear to me: my own artistic ideal stands or falls with the salvation of Germany; without Germany’s greatness my art was only a dream: if this dream is to find fulfilment, Germany, too, must necessarily attain to her preordained greatness.
I hope you will see here the outlines of an agreement which may bind me to you and to your endeavours: there is something in the fact that you felt drawn to me, and that I of all people found in you what it was that I lacked. Only Germans could be destined to feel this! -
And so - let us hope, and work in harmony! With the most sincere good wishes
Yours
Richard Wagner
(not “Kapellmeister” - please!)
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 345