Dear Friend,
Here comes the promised letter. What shall I write you therein? How much you rejoiced me by your first letter to Paris? That can only be said in a very few words to a person like you. Everything that comes from you can only add to my emotion and friendly esteem. Indeed it did not need your assurances of how you had followed me, and felt yourself involved in my development: who could measure the result of our intercourse, and remain in the smallest doubt about it? But it was handsome of you to say it to me. Accept my thanks!
Best of men, life is and remains an earnest thing. Whoso has had this brought quite plainly to his consciousness, has to win his zest and courage from something very different from life and its concerns. Certainly no one can accuse me of a dogmatic attitude or stand-offishness toward life: there is no rooted bitterness or scorn in me, and I take without question whatever presents itself, though I certainly have not to seek for it. But it always returns very soon to the primary key: and then I stay so foreign to the world, that I often wonder how much longer the game is to go on.
However, to the point! — Will you believe me, when I tell you that I drag on here precisely as at Lucerne? Only, as yet I work at no fine task besides, and have nothing to do but write a mass of letters. Even at Venice I now and then believed that, with attainment of a feeling of callousness towards the world, I should some day gain the possibility of letting the superficial whirligig of a large city revolve around me. Now, however, I fancy I'm — too tired for that! — [...]
Ah! friend, but the talking! The hours of useless talking! Either indifferent conversation — what's that to me? Or heated monologue about myself — what's that to others? And I always to bear the costs! I no longer can squander in this fashion: I really am too fatigued. The Parisian climate at present makes me very nervous, and I often feel too weak for promenading. It will only be well with me again, when at last I see some fruits of my squandering; and that is, when I work again!
What confirms me still more in my resolve to keep a strict retirement, is the possible prospect of yet representing the Tannhäuser here. If this is to come to pass, I can engage in it only under one condition, namely that I concern myself with nothing but the work itself, and hold off every vestige of a coterie to be nursed by me. My first stipulation was, that I should not have to make the smallest concession on this point. The undertaking itself seems possible for the middle of January. The translation remains the chief difficulty; so far as I can see, my young aspirant to a Vaudeville success, with whom I have hitherto plagued myself, will not do at all. Now, however, the best imaginable prospect has presented itself: I will let you know as soon as I have a favourable answer, and meanwhile merely tell you that Roger is now contemplated as translator. — But all this is going on behind the scenes.
With everything else I am having a deal of trouble, particularly with my excellent Devrient at Carlsruhe; I perceive that he, as well, has sunk fairly deep at last in the regular routine; for all his signal qualities, his nature always suffered from a streak of leather, which now appears to have lost its last elasticity. The answers the man sometimes makes me! And yet I have to be glad if I can hear anything at all, as to-day has been the case for the first time since my Paris journey. Quite certain I can by no means call the thing there, and still await from the famous young Grand Duke right speaking proofs of an energetic will. — Hark you, dearest friend! The other day you taunted your wife with harbouring the idea that I should return to Germany under no other condition than that of being fetched-in in triumph. Now let me tell you in strict confidence that I really feel as if I ought to wait for that in truth — though I would make anyone a present of the triumph, and that right gladly!
The abode is hired, and in fact — as I was bound to — for three years with prepayment of the last two terms. A pleasantly situated and detached little house, like this, offers me the only possibility of a stay in Paris; thus alone am I guaranteed against neighbours' pianos, which rage in every house here with incredible fury. There I think, however, I may passably last out my three years, provided the Swiss mountains and a visit to the "green hill" refresh me every summer. Just now I am busy furnishing, and longing much for homelike rest and possibility of working — which always mean the same to me.
So I suppose my position in the world is pretty much this: I have scarcely any more great chagrins to expect, but still great cares. Quite lately I received another exhaustive medical report on the health of my wife, which has much distressed me again. Yet I may hope that the mode of life which I am arranging here for her, as well, will prove of benefit to her condition, for the simple reason that I shall be able to keep her away from excess of company, in which she always excites herself too much through over-talking; God grant she may find a nice sensible, agreeable female companion. I have had to veto her visit to Carlsruhe for the Tristan performance, in advance: for such exciting times, as the doctor agrees, she absolutely is no longer fit. For the present she has still to undergo a grape-cure at Dresden. So there you have a piece of trouble from me, lest you should think I am hovering in the clouds!
But you make me anxious too, with your news of Karl's illness. Only, I reassure myself sooner there, as I may assume with the greatest certainty that it is merely a passing child's-malady, which, with the care taken of your children, will be of no consequence. Yet I beg the mother to set my mind at rest as soon as possible. And greet them all right well and heartily from me! Let us soon see the photograph, and be assured that — on the green hill stays my home!
Your
R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 21