Oh my friend,
So I have finally plucked up the courage to write to you once more!! - What does that mean? - Everything! Save that I might ever for a moment have ceased to love you! And - that says it all. Does my beloved friend understand? -
You, too, will have been enlightened by our dear friend as to the strange agonies to which I am incessantly exposed and which would be felt less severely by anyone other than me - at the very evening - of my life! Oh that I had to tell myself by way of consolation: “He did not know what he was doing!” He did it - I suffered - but - he did not know. But why did he not know, since his feelings were so intense and since he knew from the deep and overflowing gratitude that I owed him what unspeakable kindness he had shown me when he gave me a home, a fixed abode, a house and garden, the dearly beloved companionship of a friend, and a sphere of influence which awakened my greatest hopes? Yet he did not know that he was destroying all this, - no! he did not know! Otherwise he would not have allowed himself to take that fatal step until he had summoned his friend to his side once more - though it were for the last time! - and listened to his advice as well, his advice above all: he would then have discovered that for less than his most beloved friend’s well-being that same friend would have sacrificed homeland, peace and worldly comforts, and that no sacrifice would have seemed too great to serve his friend’s true well-being. He should have been certain of that! “Oh Parzival! Parzival” how often have I sighed those words. “What is the point of having had to sacrifice all this since he has not gained by it!” It is that - that - , my beloved friend, which gnaws at my heart: the sacrifice was not only useless, - it was harmful to you. Nothing, but nothing will ever alter this view of mine! — But it is a question now of turning this sacrifice to your advantage: and this, my beloved, is now my task. We may not bid each other welcome again until such time as you can welcome me freely and openly before the whole world - and not for my sake - for I have no need of the world’s testimony! - but for your own sake. In acting in this way you must feel that you are master, and must show Germany - of which I, too, am a part - what it can expect of you. For - this is the significance which our relationship has now assumed, and it is in order that this significance may be revealed to the whole world with its promise of hope that I now make this sacrifice, and - thus serve the fame of my glorious friend by continuing unceasingly to sacrifice myself. Only now does the sacrifice have any meaning! -
Good Friday brought me - with what deep significance! - safely home to port, a port from which I can, from now on, observe your greatness grow. It was here that I dropped anchor once before, just seven years ago; once again, at the end of this daemonically sacrosanct period, I approach the old coast on my spectral ship, aweary from watching, and once again I hear the crash of the anchor: and here - I shall complete everything! Here I wrote the last act of Tristan, a work which, in its wondrous solitude, shall become the tombstone of a noble and supremely gifted friend, towering up into the distant world as a monument to an ardent belief in love which none will ever understand. Seven years have passed: my breast swells with renewed hope; I feel an urge to be released from a solitude which no one understands. I have heard the old song of a new and glorious love: yearning for youth its sounds wafted gently towards me, borne aloft by your wondrous affection for me. And so this time I intend to create the work which shall redeem us and reconcile us with the world. We need — friends, — believe me, my beloved lord! I want to create those friends for us and gather them around us. If things were to go on as at present, we should all be destroyed! Trust me! I have learnt something in the course of my Flying Dutchman’s travels: — we need friends! They will not be made for us by any “Pfo” or “Pfi”: it is I who must make them; and, indeed, I can, for I know how. How I shall do so you must for a brief space allow to remain my own private secret. But rest assured, I shall give you something to be pleased about, and more: I shall lay the foundations of a building which shall embrace our Nibelung work! -
And so for now, my beloved! you must leave me here in all trust: it makes sense for me to remain here a while. In order to avoid the upheaval of another change of address I was resolved only a week ago to accept the great expense of remaining in the Geneva Campagne, which is why I wrote to Herr Lutz, asking for an advance on my salary in order to obtain the wherewithal to rent the villa for a year. In the end, however, the Good Friday thought of “Lucerne” asserted itself, and, since I had encountered new difficulties with regard to the Geneva Campagne, I soon made up my mind to submit myself to the renewed discomforts of a change of address. I am now more or less a day’s journey nearer to you than before, no further from Munich than in the Riss where there would have been great difficulties during the colder weather for which I shall now have to prepare myself once more. I can remain here until the star of your great majesty is in the ascendant, the star which will shine forth far beyond me and illuminate the whole of Germany. Also, the terms of the rental agreement, although not easy, are none the less somewhat more reasonable here, and I can get over the difficult periods with somewhat less pressure on me. Even so, I hope that the request which I communicated to Herr Lutz may yet be granted: its fulfilment would provide me with a welcome sense of relief, and rid me for some time to come of my peculiarly painful dealings with your lower officials who, on instructions from their superiors, only ever seem to assume a friendly countenance when they have managed to prove that they have done all they could to make life a misery. - But Parzival prefers not to hear such things! And so I shall say nothing! Yet I know how things stand with him. It is true that he shoots the swan through the heart in flight, so that it sinks down bleeding at his feet: but I know that he alone is fated to understand Anfortas’s suffering: it impresses itself upon him like a world-redeeming remembrance of the Saviour; he laughs at the snares which a maliciously short-sighted spell has cast upon him: at the very moment when deceit was most likely to delude him, a tremendous remembrance of fellow-suffering arose from deep within him, sounding its shrill lament: now he knows, he recognizes and grasps the sacred lance; as he brandishes it in his hand, the evil spell becomes as dust: his friend sinks to the ground at his feet, redeemed, in godlike radiance the grail illumines his realm and the world. -
That do I know! And - that is why I take this risk! -
There was no need of your wonderful letter to our loyal friend to reveal your greatness to me: you know that I have already praised it in song. - Now, my dear one, you must also spare our friend: if I am “Wotan”, she is my “Brünnhild”; this will explain to you all the love which unites us. Who - saving yourself - could understand Wotan and Brünnhild? You must be noble, generous and without reserve in providing for her so highly deserving husband: accord him your full and frank recognition. He is the most important prop in my edifice, a building whose foundations rest upon your love and whose gable is your undying fame! -
God be with you, my noble wonder!
Faithful unto death
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 346