Dear friend,
Your letter brought great joy to our house. The very day before it arrived we had been talking about you at length: our ears had certainly been burning! And we were so pleased to receive Werder’s good wishes: do give him our kindest regards in return. We are deeply indebted to you for all your news concerning yourself, although it all sounds melancholy enough! And yet you are more active for your age than you like to admit. I, too, am now obsessed with the curious belief that all who mean well by me will live to see a good deal yet. It is an odd thing really, but I know that I have a long and active life ahead of me, the more so since I have so much still to complete which, as I now realize, no one else can do for me. But now I have been blessed with a son. Who can gauge what this means to me? He is so strong and handsome that I was able to call him “Siegfried”, and it was to honour him that I completed my work. He is also called “Helferich”, because I intend him to be a useful helper.
I now have to bring up the lad. My wife’s four girls are growing up with him, their education and training forming the noble woman’s daily task in our peaceful retirement. Everything is prospering. The doctor has not set foot in the house for 5 months now. I am on the point of completing the full score of “Siegfried”; and almost half of the Twilight of the Gods has now been set to music. It will be three years next June since I cut myself off from the world: I have not heard a single note of an orchestra since taking my leave of the King of Bavaria in his royal box at the first performance of the “Mastersingers”. But I have also settled my account with the world, since I felt it my duty not to put up with any more jokes, but to call a spade a spade. In addition my life is recorded in detail; I have dictated it to Cosima, who wanted to know all about it; this is something that will outlive me: I am bequeathing it to my son. What Cosima is, and what she is to me, will be recognized by all who see me henceforth.
I know that you love her. - We shall probably come to Berlin in the spring: I intend to discharge my debt of gratitude to the Academy there by lecturing to them on “the Destiny of Opera”. From this people will also become acquainted with my plan to get my works properly established. What I am obliged to demand here is in a certain sense similar to Faust’s demand that the emperor should grant him enough land as he could dam off from the sea. I shall not come too close to any living soul: and I shall not set foot in the theatre. But I want to try to gain an understanding for myself: without this I have neither the ability nor the desire to achieve anything. - Cosima says I should ask you to keep our plans a secret for the present. - If I could be of use to anyone in Berlin, it would be Constantin Frantz. Do you know him? As a person he is immensely unhelpful and unbearable: but - !! Have you read his books “The Restoration of Germany” and “The Science of the State”? - He came into my life at just the right time, and was a great boon to me. But what a pitiful life this man now leads in Berlin! Oh Germany! -
Here, for your edification, is my very latest poem. - Cosima advised against sending it to the Nordd. Allg. Zeitung, as I had initially intended. I thought the matter over briefly, and have sent it to Bismarck. - A Leipzig publisher has invited me to write an Imperial Coronation March. Perhaps I shall be inspired with some good ideas.
It would be nice if this piece of music were to be played in beer gardens for example, while, for the actual coronation, you were to parade Taubert and the others like him with their commissions from on high. But we are used to this. God knows what we have done to deserve it! — I hope my son will live to see all this changed! -
My confidence in the future has been revived. It has been granted to me to gaze very, very deeply into the nature of the German spirit: only now can I understand it all, nay - only now do I really admire certain things. Wonderful progress is being made in establishing the new Reich. Everyone here has acted out of a profound instinct and ineradicable aptitudes. Anyone who does not understand figures such as Bismarck, Roon & Moltke around this King Wilhelm - is very much to be pitied. - But enough of this. We may soon be able to chatter about such things in the tranquil warmth of your own apartments. -
Fare you well, kind, dear Alwine! Your two albums are lying here on my music-desk, beautifully bound and displayed beneath the only keepsakes that I have of my great Cosima! - I glance at them daily! -
Her sincere and joyful good wishes accompany mine!
Yours,
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 399