Although somewhat belatedly, I must reply to your splendid telegram, more especially to express my gratitude for it and pleasure at it. A somewhat more detailed description of the performance of Lohengrin would certainly have been welcome, more particularly to give me some idea of Eckert’s merits and his conducting in general.
Of course, your assurance that all Jews are reconciled with me also had its effect on me. It would certainly be no bad thing if my brochure were actually properly read by sensible and intelligent Jews, but it seems as though people have forgotten how to read. Only from Vienna did I receive a letter from a young man of letters, attesting to the fact that people do indeed still know how to read. This man found that what was characteristic about my essay was its contemplative quality. And even I, when I reread it, am bound to testify that there is probably no one who has shown more objective calm than I in depicting and discussing the history of such unheard-of persecution and of the disparagement that I have encountered, a disparagement that has been as exhaustive as it has been unrelenting. Of course, I should have had to suffer in silence and say nothing if I had not uncovered the reason for this persecution. This could not be done with the kind of circumlocutions that I should now have to use in expressing my ideas on Judaism (as I call it) as something typically my own - but this is something I have in any case no intention of doing, since I cannot countenance a conflict here (utterly useless as it must be). And so I have simply had to republish the corpus delicti (out of date though it now seems to me) in order to be able to depict and explain the whole unprecedented story. To see this old piece again may have been very painful for many people - and more especially for those who are totally innocent; I could have been spared all this, and they, too, could have been spared it if the article’s latent potential had finally faded in this respect as well. For a long time I expected that this would happen, but the unprecedented insolence of the Viennese press on the occasion of the “Mastersingers”, the continual, brazen lie-mongering about me, and its truly destructive effects have finally persuaded me to take this step, regardless of its consequences, more especially after I had been questioned on the matter. But I have now given some really intelligent Jew all the material he needs to give the whole question a new and, no doubt, beneficial twist, and to assume a highly significant attitude towards this most important of all our cultural concerns. I know there must be such a person: if he does not dare to do what it is his business to do, then it is with immeasurable sadness that I shall have to concede that I was right to describe Judaism - or more especially modern German Judaism - as I did, and if I leave the description to stand, as I have done. But one needs courage as well as mere presumption, for I take the matter very seriously. - When you tell me that “Lohengrin” has reconciled the Jews with me, what I understand by this is really only that my brochure is regarded as over-hasty and, as such, is forgiven me. I do not find this very comforting. I have already encountered a very great deal of good-naturedness, especially on the part of Jews. Let one of them show real courage, only then will I rejoice! -
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 378