My shield and treasure! Dearest of friends! My beloved lord,
A thousand good wishes to you in Nuremberg from the haven of Triebschen! What an agreeable surprise it was to learn of your journey to your Franconian provinces! The letter in which you recently announced this intention was full of solemnity and sadness: I understood all that was left unsaid!! The theme of the third act on which I am now working is:
Illusion! Illusion! everywhere illusion!
this theme is brought out everywhere: even Beckmesser’s laughable despair is given this magical background. My glorious friend, it is the theme which dominates my own life and that of all noble hearts; would we have to struggle, to suffer and to deny ourselves, if the world were not ruled by “illusion”? I am now taking care to keep out of its way, and pay the world practically no further heed, except inasmuch as it involves avoiding illusion, mercilessly and with complete resignation. I am sitting here in my lonely lakeside fortress, like Sachs in his cobbler’s shop, observing the world with a view to writing poetry and music about it: but “illusion” knows how to root me out even here, and it recently came in the form of sheer madness; and since, thanks to your bravery, my Siegfried! - it is no longer my enemies who now disturb me, it now has to be my “friends”. I pray to God that I may succeed in sparing you this latest calamity to befall me, which has left me in the most painful agitation for two weeks now! But in order to give you some indication of what things are always like with me, I must tell you - but this time to amuse you - that it is no longer a question of my having to recommend people to you for every kind of grace and favour - something for which I receive demands almost every day from every quarter of the globe, and which, in spite of their great futility, keep on accumulating: no! This time I am to see to it that you fall in love with and marry a young lady of dragoon-like temperament who has taken it into her head to become your wife! The unhappy girl is a pupil of dear Frau Schnorr and, finding the latter disposed to believe in ghosts, so prejudiced her in her favour and urged her on with alleged appearances and communications from her late husband that I am bound to believe, for many other physiological reasons besides, in the imminent onset of total madness in our poor friend. These unhappy women thrust themselves upon me here: Frau von Bülow, who has made it her rule to take upon herself every kind of self-sacrifice in order to protect me from all disturbances, fended them off as best she could, and in the process drew down upon herself the hatred of the eccentric Frau Schnorr to the extent that we must now fear the most furious outbursts of her anger; which is why we have had to think of taking certain measures which - if necessary - may result in medical precautions having to be taken but which alternatively may involve the police, since what we are dealing with here is a series of blatant criminal intrigues on the part of an impostor in respect of whom - as I know from sad experience - I may not be wrong in assuming the hand of our enemies to be involved, so critical a moment have they chosen! This disturbance has had a most distressing effect upon me, since my soul’s most sacred and delicate sinews have been rudely plucked by this violent stirring of memories of our dearly departed friend. In consequence of such experiences I now ask myself with ever greater longing and seriousness how I should best set about fleeing from the world? It is a curious thing, but it really does seem strangely anachronistic that I should have been born at this moment in history. Rather should I have been born in an age of noble endeavour: I should then have spread my wings in boldest flight, instead of which I have been born into an age of decline and decay, which I must first survive before the springtime of my artistic ideal can find the light and air that it needs. But if, in consequence of this understanding, I am now utterly tired of life and weary of the world, if I am often deeply, deeply - oh! so deeply - ! depressed and sad beyond consoling; - lo! the light shines forth once more! Thanks to my friend’s great love a portrait of him now smiles down on me from a wall in every room of my house! Oh! my beloved! my King! my angel! A smile from your lips, a glance of your eye, and my soul is transfixed by a celestial light; and all at once I see what a sin it is to feel despair! “You” were born for me; and so I, too, was born at the right time! -
But what is this? Today I am writing to you in - Nuremberg! - Do you know what this strange old town of Nuremberg now means to me? It is the abode of the “art-work of the future”, the Archimedes point at which we shall move the world - the inert mass of the stagnating German spirit! - And now, back to my “illusion”. -
May I describe for my beloved’s sake the Prelude to the third act of my “Mastersingers”? I often have to play it to our friend: God knows! it seems to have turned out a success. - This is how it is there: - during the third verse of Hans Sachs’s Cobbling Song we heard a second, deeply plaintive melody accompanying the tune of the song itself - a melody made up of sustained notes. It now emerges in a lower register at the beginning of the introduction to the third act, quite alone, grave and melancholy, like plaintive brooding: it is taken up by the other string instruments in an interlacing pattern and brought to a sadly resigned conclusion; but at that very moment the strings are joined by the lower wind with “Awake! full soon will dawn the day” - which all the townsfolk will sing at the end of the act, greeting Sachs in a mood of the most solemn emotion. It now rings forth like a blissful premonition: following the first section of this melody the string instruments again add their voices, lifting up their eyes to the sun, as it were, in tender emotion, to a sun which shines clemently through the window on the head of the brooding figure, causing the dust to dance a golden dance, in contemplation of which the rapt figure is lost in a smile of tender melancholy. Once again the lower wind enter with the second section of their glorious proclamation and bring it to its conclusion as though with solemn emotion: the strings add their voices then, as though in a flood of the most sublime tears; it is the same theme as we heard at the beginning, but in a soft and gentle colouring; it sinks down as though with a smile of tender resignation, the only happiness of a noble heart and lofty mind, in order to die away, tenderly and touchingly, as though with a nobler reminiscence of the actual Cobbling Song. - That is the Prelude: the curtain rises. Sachs in a chair reading a chronicle of world history; finally he engages in conversation with David, but without really allowing himself to be interrupted in his meditations: when the young apprentice has left, we hear the earlier plaintive, low-pitched melody once again; to its accompaniment Sachs now begins to sing: “Illusion! Illusion! everywhere illusion!” -
This, my beloved Parzival, is my daily task, my day’s activity, in the best sense of the word. - But - , today I am writing to you in Nuremberg: - what this means is:
But now has dawned Midsummer’s day!
We’ll see now how Hans Sachs intends
turning this madness to his ends,
that good may come of ill;
for if it plagues us still,
e’en here in Nuremberg,
let’s make it do such work
as needs a touch of madness in it;
and so let one who’s mad begin it. -
This is what I have been telling myself, and this is the meaning of my words of greeting to my beloved in Nuremberg. Believe me - you, me and Nuremberg - thereby hangs a tale! How everything now falls into place, so strangely, as though woven by our angel in order to master our daemons. Oh, I pray that you may like it there: it is your first triumphal entry, for with this entry into Nuremberg at the end of your first royal tour you will triumph over the worst of your enemies; yes, you will celebrate a victory over yourself; for I believe and know what it has cost you, my dear and incomparably sweet friend: it has cost you a great effort of will to tear yourself away from such a consoling haven of peace in order to perform duties whose harshness can be mitigated by no amount of splendour or magnificence. Oh, I believe and know this to be so! How often have I yearned to be able to hold out a fellow hand to you, even for a moment, when I followed the course of your journey, festivities, speeches, balls etc. in the newspaper! But ah! that is precisely what it was! But if you must suffer and bear an intolerable burden, you can at least tell yourself that this suffering will bear fruit! And indeed, it must be so. Most beloved of men, I should like to see you again soon and speak to you: I have already told you of my deep and sincere desire to do so. But of course, Neumayr must not let himself be embarrassed by this: for - this man has my blessing from the very bottom of my soul. This man, too, I should like to get to know, more especially for his own sake, so that he may form his own opinion of me and learn to get by in a situation in which, I freely admit, the studies of Bavarian statesmen have so far made little progress. I should also like to consult with you on the arrangements necessary for performing the Mastersingers: assuming that no new “madness” overtakes me here and that the wretched world leaves my poor nerves in peace, I hope, with luck, to have finished my (your!) score by the spring, and, if I could now assure myself in good time of the requisite means of performing the piece, there would be nothing to prevent a festive performance of the work from taking place in the course of next summer. I should also like to become personally acquainted with your new Cabinet Secretaries: the unfortunate circumstances in which we have found ourselves until now have meant that a great deal has had to be left undone, and that I shall be cast in a poor light if this situation is not fundamentally and systematically regulated. At all events, if our reunion (albeit for only a brief visit in the first instance!) were to run into difficulties (difficulties which I, for one, have no wish to cause), it would be desirable if my gracious lord were to indicate to me which of his secretaries I could turn to in the cases outlined above. -
I am now on my own for a time, since Frau Cosima has gone to see poor Hans in Basle, in order to offer him what help she can at present. Great, however, is the decline into which we have all sunk - and to what avail? That utter wretchedness may thrive! Oh world! “Illusion! Illusion! Everywhere illusion!” - Which brings me back to where I started! If Hans Sachs did not know a way of using illusion for some nobler end, and if his Walther had not beckoned to him from the royal castle at Nuremberg, - ah, how sad my theme would sound today! - But the music I hear is:
Awake! Full soon will dawn the day! -
Good luck, my King! Good luck, my hero, my saviour! Thus far have we come: - my King prospers and reigns! He loves me, and I live in him! All hail the day! All hail Nuremberg! I am happy!
Sincerest good wishes from the very depths of my soul!
Eternally
Your most loyal servant
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 355