That's just the way with me, dearest Wesendonck! Here you have back the letter of B.; please give your dear wife my best thanks for her effort at intervention.
Once more I feel much and deeply humbled; the thing nearest my heart is a rooted resignation, as all my endeavours seem quite foolish to me. Indeed I can testify that I ask nothing more from the world than a workshop, and untroubled leisure to labour therein: fortune and happiness I do not desire; yet what I want is just what I ought not to ask of the world, as it can't be its business to favour such liftings above it. That I feel quite plainly: — why don't I cease from unallowable pretensions? — There I am, wanting to create a work which the purchaser doesn't even deem worth the cost of nourishing the author while he writes it! And that's the sum-total of all the applause and renown I have won! Can anything be bitterer, and yet — as the world is established — more just? — The very people best calculated to represent the world in a worldly sense towards the artist, from of old have been the Princes, because of their being raised above the meaner needs of life and all necessity of their supplying. If one pries into all these protections, however, one notices as much of oppressive, wounding, spurious there, as anywhere else; and I am the least fitted to hazard the very happiest exception, as I do not care a rap for the externals that seem to constitute the essence of the thing.
Now you desire to replace both music-publisher and prince — entre nous — to the best of ability? My God, were I in your place and could manage it, I certainly would do the very same, for giving is more blessed than receiving; that is precisely my nature, seeing that giving (in my fashion) has really robbed me of all my strength. I scarcely thank you for your offer, as I know for certain that the feeling of being able to make it, must be a pleasure that rewards itself far more than any uttered thanks could do. Should it come to your being able to carry out your purpose with me wholly, and if ever I am to play a rôle in the history of Art, you surely should also occupy no scanty place therein; and to preserve this for you with all energy and outspokenness would be for me a true contentment of the heart. Have you a fancy to lift us both so high?
Meantime I feel weighed down with lead, and still am incapable of any soaring to fresh hope: all seems to me so impossible, that could help me to rest and wholly free my tortured spirit. From a noisy, ticking, tapping, hammering and clanking house, I stare into the world outside; and the more I try to fix my eye on a point where I might find quiet, the more alien and incongruous does the world display itself before my gaze. I see nothing before me but a horribly busy wilderness of grinning faces, and if I spy out traits of sympathy, they are always joined with the shoulder-shrug of powerlessness. Is a miracle about to shew me power and sympathy combined in you? It's too good to believe. Let me look a little closer, to come to fair deliberation! — Adieu for to-day! God knows what is becoming of
Your
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 11