[It is too late to pre-pay the letter; don't pre-pay yours, and we shall be quits.]
Really this only was wanting to me, that Wigand should leave me in the lurch with regard to the honorarium. I have so much amusement in Paris that only this joy of daily useless waiting was necessary to render it complete. As Wigand had already sent word to Zurich that he would send me money to Paris, I only took from my wife — whom I wished to leave fully provided with money against all conceivable circumstances — as much as I thought I should require here in addition to the honorarium: necessary expense in the matter of dress has exhausted my supply sooner than I expected, and I should already have written to my wife to send more money had I not every day thought I could count on Wigand's sending the sum. As my wife, in case of necessity, has enough money for me, the matter, fortunately, is of small moment: but it is annoying, because from day to day I have not known precisely in what state I am, and therefore have delayed to take the necessary steps at the right time with my wife. I wish Wigand would send me a bill of exchange direct to my address.
It is quite splendid here in Paris, dear friend, and in your last letter you thoroughly foresaw how much good it does me to refresh body and soul here. In one point only are you mistaken, and not to appear quite unthankful I must set this right: the complaint about the feeling of loneliness which I once expressed in a letter to Heine did not in any way relate to Zurich and my friends there, but merely to my position in general, and particularly also a wee bit to my good friend Heine, with his ideal of Parisian success. I was fortunate enough not to have this ideal looked upon by my Zurich friends as the one allotted to me: they were so thoroughly agreed to leave me to my nature, and to take me, in all I undertake, just as I am and just as I do, that this thoroughly sound expression of the simple Swiss intelligence of my friends contributed not a little to make me feel by no means alone in their company, whenever I turned away my eyes from the greater world. Feeling deeply the necessity of this justification, I must tell you in a few words who these friends are. My nearest are two, through whose support, offered in the most generous and tender manner, I and my family were kept during three months: one is Wilhelm Baumgartner, pianoforte teacher, a solid, clear head, a cheerful, uncommonly good-natured and studious man; and the other Jacob Sulzer, town-clerk (next to the burgomaster) of the canton, a philosophical, well-trained mind, a noble, firm, far-seeing radical. Both are still in the twenties. In the second rank stand: Spyri, a young advocate, open-hearted, very receptive, enthusiastic, devoted; Hagenbuch, second town-clerk of the canton, an energetic, fine young man, bright intellect, sound heart, sprightly manners: both likewise still in the twenties. My old friend, Alexander Müller, from Erfurt, and settled for the last eighteen years in Zurich as music-teacher, is a first-rate musician, a trusty and very devoted friend to me: unfortunately, through too much teaching and through irritating illness, he has become somewhat inaccessible to new ideas. To these intimate friends may be added a number of more distant, but very pleasant, acquaintances. In their circle I have often found myself stirred up and roused almost more than was good for me.
Here in Paris people have an immense lot to do, but merely with themselves or with paltry matters. I do not know any artists: even Berlioz — whose eccentricities I would willingly forgive — cannot, as body-guard of Meyerbeer, attract me. The only man who interests me here is Liszt's secretary, Belloni, appointed to look after my business affairs and intrigues: but he has not yet arrived in Paris. Through an extremely fortunate misunderstanding and inexactness on his part I have arrived in Paris four weeks too soon. The copying out of the parts of my overtures seemed so expensive here — as I have at length discovered after being in Paris ten days — that I have had to write to Liszt about it, and so await the parts, at least of the Tannhäuser overture, which have been printed.
Meanwhile I have seen Le Prophète for the first time in my life, and on the very evening before I received your last letter with the book, for which please accept my best thanks. During the last act I was unfortunately disturbed by a banker, who was talking at the top of his voice in his box. However, I have become convinced, and in fact at this forty-seventh performance of the opera, that the work has won from the Parisian public an undeniably great and lasting success: the house is always full to overflowing, and the applause more enthusiastic than I have ever found it here before.
I am glad to be able to tell you that I have discovered the nature of my illness: it was, to a great extent, melancholy; at any rate a strained state of mind has brought my constitution into the present dangerous and excited condition. Just lately, in a detailed letter to F. L., the contents of which will be communicated to you, I have thoroughly explained the motives which have decided me under no condition whatever to write an opera for Paris; at most I would agree to give Lohengrin, a work which I have completed, and which has become indifferent to me, to be plucked to pieces and woven into the wreath of honour of the great Parisian opera-house: as, however, I am not so childish as to believe that this gift would be found suitable; and as, besides, it is quite impossible for me to help with even a stroke of the pen towards such an offering of my wares, I imagine that my dear friends, Heine and Fischer (to whom, indeed, I do not yet venture to communicate this), will not have the pleasure of seeing a Wagnerian Swan-knight swim across the Rhine. Already — and this was a great boon to me — I felt better after sending off that letter, an improvement which became more marked when yesterday I received the answer, which brought hearty congratulations on my resolve. Not to be looked upon altogether as a fool, I will wait here for the production of my Tannhäuser overture, and then, by means of a journey southwards, try and fully recover my health. Thus, dear friend, a horse in the desert cures itself by biting open a vein; the vein with me is: Parisian Opera. I feel happy as this unhealthy, stagnant blood passes from me.
Perhaps it is possible to get my Art-work of the Future translated into French for this place. When it appears it will be well to have left behind me all French mountains, otherwise I should be unconditionally expelled. I have had to give up my plan of working, not for present but for future Paris: apart from the unfortunate circumstance that I have only German, not French instinct, my articles would only be accepted by socialistic papers; the first would no sooner have appeared than I, under the conditions known to me at present, should receive notice to quit Paris within twenty-four hours.
Paris and the French know their own business, and no one need tell it them first in translated jargon. To you I say only this much: the cobbler in Lumpacivagabundus is right! The sparrows on the roofs sing his song here, and the roofs and the houses mournfully repeat it. Should I not live to witness the fulfilment of the prophecy of the star-wise cobbler, grant me a human death in that Alpine valley, but do not compel me to die like a rat in the great sweet-smelling drain. From the Alps I will write you a German Wiland, spick and span, which the people will some day understand. Siegfried and Achilles, for which the interpreters are not yet born, I will bequeath, printed black upon white, to a more fortunate posterity.
Since yesterday I have been writing at the article for the March number of the Deutsche Monatsschrift — "Art and Climate."
Never fear about my new home in Switzerland! To the Swiss authorities I am no exile; my expulsion would have to be specially demanded by the Holy Alliance, in which case, by means of citizenship, quickly to be obtained, I should be safe. So K. can come without any fear.
Good-bye, dear friend! To-day is the 24th of February. I will go and walk about a little in the Champs Élysées! Salute my friends, and especially my dear Ritters.
Farewell!
Your
Richard Wagner.
59, rue de Provence.
(Wonderful misprints again in my book! for example, unmenschlich instead of urmenschlich!)
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 9