Dearest, best Lady!
You indeed are a friend that does not take affront at once, if a letter stays unanswered, but writes charmingly on! And honourably shall you be mentioned for it! Your last letter but one I received on my return from Russia, here in Vienna. I hardly knew what to say to your assuming that I should have declined the invitation of the Petersburg Philharmonic Society (a posse of German musicians), out of Polish patriotism, and preferred to starve in Germany!
So I had to leave you looking in amazement at my going there, and devising measures for my giving better guarantees of my political conscientiousness in future. — Ah, best friend! I'm an utterly frivolous being: I'm a fanatic of quiet, nothing else. At Petersburg and Moscow, in the midst of my triumphs, the midst of true joy at the really incredibly fine performances I brought about with the musicians there — in the midst of acclamations not surpassed for warmth and enthusiasm by Vienna itself — at bottom I had but one fancy in mind, the hut and garden with a few fine old trees, which I had left to others everywhere in Germany on my departure, and I meant to conquer for myself by everything that went on round me. Arrived back in Vienna, direct from Petersburg, I called on no one, but merely spied out for the longed-for house and garden: from the Rhine delays — found of a sudden at Penzing (at Penzing!) — the house and garden, quiet, pleasant! I rent, and furnish agreeably to my taste, with my own money — or rather, what I have been left of it —, am alone, have found good and sympathetic servants, and now am hunting out my work again!
Admit it! With such a man there's nothing to be done! Just give me up! While I still was seeking, I thought to myself: God, if Liszt were suddenly to write that he had found you a beautiful house and garden in Rome — would you go there after all? Well: not freely! Why? I cannot stand excitement any longer, especially just now. I have been so shamefully robbed of precious years of work and productivity, that I believe such a charge of altogether new impressions, as Rome and Italy, would throw me wholly out of gear. Proudhon somewhere says, in opposition to those who looked to railways for such marvels in the intellectual training of mankind: "le génie est sédentaire." And so it is, believe me! Whom a little suffices not to build his world, still less will he be capable to do it out of much. Yet I say all this with a certain bitterness of disclaimer. Heavens! how gladly would I also stretch myself out there, for once, and let a wondrous outer world react upon me! But everyone has his dæmon, and mine is a horridly despotic beast; he yokes me to his purpose out and out.
Tell me, child! how can I get a copy of my Meistersinger poem to you? Please inquire, and let me know. I'm living here entirely without company, and wish for nothing but to be left alone, to be able to complete my job without interruption. Whether I perform anything of it, or not, has become at last a matter of total indifference to me. Yes, it thoroughly suited me, after my enormous exertion, that I hadn't to take up Tristan here again at once (Frau Dustmann is ill). After all, one must get along with what one is to one's own self: to be able to have a little respect for oneself, is therefore the one thing needful.
But of course, one mustn't be given such glowing accounts of wonders like the Michael Angelo, etc.; for then one's heart grows heavy — to be sure! Moreover, for your tranquillising I will tell you that I read an Austrian paper every day, instinctively side with the Polish insurrection, and in general am falling into many of my old weaknesses. But I feel like Goethe: for a proper political fervour I haven't hate enough, and without that one contents no party. God! do you believe, then, that there is a single educated person in Petersburg to whom the Polish events are not a horror, or who does not feel and speak about them just as you and I? But "Politics," "Government," and whatever else the Devil's stuff may call itself — eh! that's another thing. And believe me, I and you, we are not made for it; even Garibaldi is not, and still less Bakunin, but quite certainly Louis Napoleon. And who would measure himself with him? The Devil!
Little Tausig is my only companion, a sensible young man, quite out of the common.
If you've been able to make any sense of these lines (it's shocking weather out-of-doors) I shall be heartily delighted. Where should I have to begin, to write you rationally!
A thousand cordial greetings!
Your
R. Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 53