Dear friend,
It was most kind of you to write to me on your birthday, the very day, moreover, on which my wife had written to you about us. What you wrote was most gratifying, since it expressed with pleasant solemnity the frame of mind in which we all seem to be at present. It would almost be called a mood of apprehension following the disgust we feel at everything we see and hear, so that when we finally regain our senses, it is with the question what do we actually have in common with this scandalous world of ours? - Liszt has been staying with us for a week: we have again grown very fond of him; but his departure was bound to leave us with all our old feelings of apprehension. What did he not tell us about the world that we did not already know right down to the very last detail, but which time and again it frightened us to death to hear gone into in this way. There was much he could tell us, since people thought we had fallen out with him, and so he believed he was doing us a favour by telling us of such base behaviour. On the whole I feel increasingly that I know my fellow humans less and less: this may be very necessary if one is to write for posterity. But it is curious how often I feel like a novice under constant supervision! When one is simply working in a vacuum, individual loneliness becomes immense. I can well understand what it was that so often stifled and almost suffocated you: you simply looked around you a good deal. But it is a question now of seeing and not seeing! If one abandons hope, one will no doubt also be rid of one’s despair. In the end one feels that the only means of gaining self-consciousness is to set oneself apart, quite emphatically, from one’s fellow men, and to do so, moreover, by attacking their vileness. At least I myself have now reached the point where I refuse to mince my words in any way: and if the Empress of Austria herself were to cross my path, she would certainly be well-served! Something must emerge from all this. For one thing is certain, there can be no question of any compromise or private understanding here: to make oneself feared, when one is so very much hated, is the only course that can help. -
I have been thinking more and more about “what is German”, and, on the basis of a number of more recent studies, have succumbed to a curious scepticism which leaves me thinking of “Germanness” as a purely metaphysical concept; but, as such, it is of immense interest to me, and certainly something that is unique in the history of the world, its only possible counterpart being Judaism, since Hellenism, for example, does not really fit in here.
But then my gaze falls upon my son, my Siegfried: the boy is growing sturdier and stronger by the day, and is just as quick with his wits as he is with his fist. He is a complete marvel to me, and if I have driven away despair with the support of my wife, the lad is now teaching me what it is to feel hope again. And so the old dance starts up all over again, but this time at the proper speed. The boy now makes me think of you, my friend, and purely for reasons of family egoism inspires me with an inordinate desire to see all the hopes that I have placed in you fulfilled to the very last letter: for the boy - ah! - needs you! -
But I have already told you as much. You know - : in old age people start to repeat themselves! The same is true of me and my outpourings, with which I have been showering the world - and more especially you - in pamphlet form. I expect you have already received “Actors and Singers”? It is yet another way of dealing with the same issue: this time I have approached it directly through actors. In doing so I again had the experience of having already completed it when a great many new ideas struck me that would not have been out of place there, but at least I have a hook on which to hang my next pamphlet. But it is all really only in a vacuum! When I think about it more closely, I simply do not know to whom to send my free copies. Do you want any more for your colleagues in Basle? Rohde shall have one. - Incidentally, your “Basle” colleagues remind me that I must let you and your friends know the dates of our forthcoming visit. We intend embarking upon our voyage of discovery through the German Empire early in November: the first diversion from our main purpose will be a visit to my celebrated dentist in Basle, whose most tender cares can now no longer be avoided. I imagine that this functional visit will last a whole week, and thus provide us with 8 evenings which we would hope to spend in your own and your friends’ company, pleasantly consoled for the maltreatment suffered during the day. I imagine that we shall be arriving during the third week of November; we shall then seek to obtain some assurances from you regarding the American’s existence and willingness.
Otherwise the life we are leading is now somewhat dissolute, as a result no doubt of our temporary move to the Dammallee. Liszt’s visit was the biggest interruption, when the capacity of our “salon” here was put to its severest test. We have now cleared up all misunderstandings with this wonderful man, at least as far as it is still possible to do so, and our only cause for regret was - and is - that we cannot really hope to be of any real help to him in this strangely dissipated life of his. It is possible, however, that he will come and live with us here. After getting to know your New Year’s Echoes, he found Bülow’s verdict very extreme: even without having heard you play the piece (and it was this that was decisive in our case), he felt that his verdict on your “music” must be totally different and certainly more favourable. And so, let us say no more about this B.esque Intermezzo: I feel as though two eccentricities of the most extreme kind had come into violent contact here. This, too, I mention only in passing: for on the whole and in the main everyone must no doubt come to a clearer understanding about himself through himself, and not through others. What would become of me, for ex., if I were to set too much store by Herr Edmund Hoefer (see enclosure)? - I reread your book last summer: my wife devoured it again more recently. I imagine your ears must have been pleasantly burning the while, as if you had been listening to some very good music. -
This time you are getting a fairly respectable letter from me: I hope my tittle-tattle cheers you up; you will gather at any rate that in the long run the baseness of people and things cannot affect me, and so I end up by having the advantage of being able to address you, too, in a good mood. -
Best wishes from us all! I hope we shall meet again soon in the city of Erasmus!
Cordially yours,
Richard Wagner.
Feustel’s silver-wedding anniversary!
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 412