Very many thanks, dear Hans, for your news! Your worries about Beckmesser’s lute touch me deeply, but everything that concerns you touches and moves me, from your visit to Graupe near Pillnitz with Lipinski and your debut in Zurich - to these melancholy lines in which the whole purport of our relations in life must now be examined with an earnestness that cannot but cause great pain. Our arrangement in Munich was designed and calculated to transfigure our suffering with the aid of art; what separated us was meant to keep us together, what we sacrificed was meant to enrich us. How deeply and sincerely - and how often - was I moved by you when we stood at the very pinnacle of our task: you, too, then saw things clearly and comprehensibly. But this arrangement has now been taken from us: what enthusiasm alone once illumed with lightning-like intensity must now stand revealed to us, clearly and consciously, in the calm light of day; what is unavoidably necessary must now become part of a rational, conscious plan.
What is it that you want to say when you keep on calling me “honoured Master”?
How often have I appealed to your heart! do you now mean that the friend is sacrificing himself to his “Master”? Indeed, it is only as “Master” that I may lay claim to a friend’s sacrifice: shall I continue to work creatively, or am I now finished? - That is the decision that hangs over me. I, too, have already made great sacrifices, - believe me, supreme sacrifices of friendship, in order that I might continue to work: everything now points inexorably in the same direction, - only a friend’s sacrifice can ensure that I continue to work in the future. Do you believe in friendship? - love of the master! -
And were it to be so - ah! - you need have no fears about getting Beckmesser’s lute made! Many thanks for seeing to it! it reminds me of my own duty! If only I could make you really happy! - Let us hope that I can! -
Yours,
R.W.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 361