Dear Wesendonck,
Though I arrive at little rest to resurvey my past with any clearness, it suffices to breathe to myself your name, to call one of the most important periods of my life so plainly back to mind that my heart at once is filled with the tenderest feeling of thanks for your kindness and friendship, and turns in friendliness towards you. How it was that your friendship, your willing sacrifices, yet brought me no repose, no peace, I must try and explain to myself: I understand it when I grow aware that no relation in the world, no friendship, no affection, could ever bring me peace and rest. I understand the past, in which you also were so nearly swallowed up, when I look back upon it from the extraordinary strain and turmoil of the present, wherein has been so strongly woven the most sincere and ardent love of a wonderfully-gifted Royal youth to the ripened, peace-desirous man. — Peace and rest have not been granted me: — that surely must have its own deep cause! Yet how happy, if I can find peace in remembrance at least; let me dream of rest in thinking of the time when I lived beneath your shelter, and created! It was a powerfully productive period; even yet, with the greatest exertions, we haven't got so far as giving to the world what then was made. The disturbance that drove me from you, six years back, ought to have been avoided: it made my life so foreign to me, that you yourself no longer recognised me when I returned to you at last for awhile. That grief should have been spared me too: to myself it seemed as if 't were possible, and beautiful would it have been, very beautiful, nay, sublime, had it indeed been spared me, but one must not ask for the Sublime, and I was wrong.
Now much has altered with me. Everything around me has become almost new. Yet this new world is animated by nothing but the effort to put new life into the old. The Nibelungen, too, are to be resumed, finished, and set before the world. What your most generous and self-denying sympathy could not achieve, none but a King can now lead to its goal. I have confessed to you that, with my departure from your neighbourhood, my life slipped down a current that swallowed everything once reckoned for the furtherance of my creation. Even the rich advances which you made me on the publication of the Nibelungen works were engulfed in an outlay that stood in no helpful relation to those works. More than a year ago I had to beg you to view those advances as lost, since there was no possibility of regaining them by publication of the works themselves. I now may think myself lucky, even to see them published at all: for the Walküre, a copy of which I send you to-day, I can get nothing from my publisher save a trifling set-off against the advances which he made me on the Meistersinger, a work whose completion still lies very far from me. Yet, if I ask you now to give up all your claims upon my Nibelungen works, it is not that I abandon the hope of some day repaying you your advances themselves. Naturally this can be accomplished only through the generosity of my Kingly friend. But if I am to think of the liquidation of even such private debts by him, I necessarily must wait with patience for the favourable season, and beg you to wait also.
You will understand how careful I must be for the moment, not to involve the youthful, scarcely adult benefactor in any too great system of expenditure for me. His consuming thought is for the performance of the works themselves; we are founding a special school for training the performers, and a special theatre is to be built for the festival representations. You have had evidence enough, how plans like these inflame on every hand, what menaces and persecutions these projects of the youthful King have already drawn on me. I know that you will be the first to admonish me to prudence and moderation here, and — as that is in your power — you of all others will certainly assist me by your willing patience to exercise that prudence and moderation. These works, however, both should and must belong to the King of Bavaria. Even Tristan und Isolde I shall allow to be performed nowhere else, and now, most likely, not even in Munich itself. The Nibelungen can only be given as a festival-gift by the King to the nation; with the ordinary Theatre, the gamble for likes or dislikes, sale or non-sale, it is at end.
Assuredly, dear friend, you will kindly understand me, and not misconstrue my petition, if I beseech you from my heart to grant to the fulfiller and presenter of the Nibelungen-work the sole possession of what therein is my work. Please understand me, and be kind to me, when I beg you to yield with a good grace to the King of Bavaria the original score of the Rheingold now in your keeping. The King shall and will hear of your rights over this work: I feel sure that he will not leave you unrewarded. If we now defer that recompense, it is in reliance on the kindness of the old friend who by this fresh proof of his noble sentiment will contribute to the welfare of the creator of those works himself in such a way that he gains rest and leisure to complete and represent them. Surely you will not be angry with me, and understand my prayer?
How much I need benign and good experiences even now — ah! now of all times — I have not to assure you? What powers are master of my life, to rack my heart and scare me with the most unheard-of ills, you surely see without my needing to recount them to you. If under the grand impressions of the rehearsals for my Tristan I dreamt awhile of actual crowning of my long and grievous life as artist, I need but to remind you that a week ago I returned from the corpse of my noble, splendid singer, to tell you what my thoughts must be about my fortune!! —
Many hearty greetings to your dear wife. She keeps for ever what is of more value than the re-begged fair copy of that score. Yet should this restoration pain you, I perhaps can forward something you would think a fair return. What?
Farewell, best Wesendonck! May these lines find you in good health and spirits!
Your
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 38