My most glorious and most kingly lord and friend,
It was a beautiful day, the eleventh of October! Your heavenly letter arrived, and - the second act of Parsifal was completed right down to the very last note. It was a cause for jubilation and tears of joy in Wahnfried. And I had good reason to celebrate finishing this particular act as though it were some festival. Before I began it, I was afraid of the terrible excitement which the great catastrophe between Parsifal and Kundry would have to offer. In Tristan I had to portray the all-consuming anguish of love’s longing, inconceivably intensified to a pitch of the most painful desire for death; the Ring of the Nibelung is replete with raging passion, and Venus and Tannhäuser - in the later revision - know what the terrors of love are. But for Parsifal and Kundry all this is completely new: here are two worlds locked in a struggle for final redemption. How often I told myself that, having lost myself so often before in these various spheres, I could have spared myself that torment on this occasion. But, as the common saying goes, it was a question of “you’ve made your bed, now you must lie on it!” - I have already complained to my understanding friend that I was disappointed in last summer’s expectations concerning my health: it was because of my cure that I interrupted my work at the fatal “kiss”; and now I was supposed to start up again at the very point where only the most high-spirited mood could produce what I need to tend mankind’s most critical sufferings with the tenderest possible care. I yearned for an act of the Mastersingers, and thought of my old friend Fischer - now long dead - who was chorus-master in Dresden: I remember once, in 1848, reading out to him a passage from the newspapers that spoke of “noisy scenes” that had taken place somewhere or other, and how he clasped his hands together and cried out: “ah! would that I might hear of noiseless scenes!” - Well, I plunged into purgatory, and have re-emerged from it safely. I know - this work, too, has turned out to be worthy of us. - I intend going straight on without a break to the third act, which promises me a blessed harvest after the labours of the second act. But I must first introduce it with an orchestral prelude to accompany Parsifal’s effortful wanderings up to the point where he rediscovers the realm of the Grail. But this in turn leads to the Good Friday meadow, - and I shall be happy to linger there. - Here, my uniquely beloved prince, my protector and friend whose radiance illumines me with ever - and ever - greater splendour, here you have the true import of my life. All other events that take place in the world, and, more especially, fate’s dallying sport with me and my works, affect me only as much as they would affect a man who was dead and whose spirit gazed down - as though from a cloud - to see what the world would make of all that he had bequeathed to it. I can only shake my head: there is nothing more that can persuade me to feel any interest in such activity. After all, I have my King and my wife! -
Ah! And this King is a source of such great joy! He really intends to have his portrait painted for me! What this means to me is something which he - so great and godlike is he - can, alas, most certainly never imagine! Oh! To be so kind, so infinitely kind as to grant the wretch that I am this boldest of all my entreaties! But - in all seriousness! I trust only Lenbach to requite this most gracious sacrifice of your favour and love. He is a genius among present-day portrait-painters, as the French have once again recognized of late; and he loves his King to distraction, just as he truly understands him with the most innocent inwardness. I am sure that this painting will be something quite splendid! Ah! as long as you remain true to me, my most precious and gracious King! You have always been so, and more and more a match in your kindness, favour - and forbearance! - And so - : I am filled with hope! - It is my only hope, this hope which I place in you, my godlike friend!
In doting love my wife joins me in raising her eyes up to him whom, in awestruck humility, my children behold hovering above them as the guardian angel of their very existence, and to whom I commit my soul with the joyfullest devotion as one who is
uniquely and immortally his
for this world:
“Richard Wagner”
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 467