Dear Friend Theodor,
Your last letter to Paris I received yesterday — your last of all to-day.
All that I like so much in your letters — especially the earlier one, which from the bottom of my heart rejoices me, and to which, indeed, I can only answer with my warmest love — I will not notice in detail, for it concerns you in your whole character as a man; and for that I should need much, very much time, and especially also inclination, to arrange my answer with pen, ink, and paper. Now I will at once tell you what I don't like in your letter, or better still, write it; for it can be done briefly, and perhaps better by writing than by word of mouth. So listen!
You are not yet perfect, i.e., the royal chamber-musician still sticks in your body, that same chapel-musician who performs his duties, who is chosen on widows' fund committees, and who seeks to come to terms with Müller about the "Modality" of this or that passage. Your care for the better payment of supernumeraries was noble and kind; but that in all men you only see supernumeraries, that in your care for me you place this care for salary so much in the forefront, and only allow place for my nature and my resolves after you feel yourself rid of this care — that has made me downright vexed with you. Your joy, when you at last learn that I have a yearly maintenance — this joy which first gives you courage to let me be what I am — all this has seemed to me very unworthy of you; for I allow you all joys, only not those of the Philistine; for you are my brother. As I read your last, enclosed, letter by the fireside, I got so fearfully out of temper, that I threw the letter of my best friend — I repeat, embittered and angered by this your unworthy joy at my "maintenance" — I threw this letter into the bright chimney-fire! Rejoice now, my dear brother, at this my deed! By this expiatory death are you absolved! This letter, engendered by your last remains of a royal chamber-musician, this letter is resolved into the elements; and as I know that this letter was the last deed, the last vital spark of this chapel-musician, so I hope that this no longer exists, at least no longer in the soul of my brother Theodor!
What placed this letter of yours in so clear and hateful a light was, that it came as enclosure in a letter from E., which I read just before yours. Ask E. what I mean by that, and in two words she will make it clear to you; for, believe me, this maiden is far ahead of you — and why? By birth, because she is a woman. She was born human; you and every man nowadays are born Philistines, and slowly and painfully do we, poorest of creatures, succeed in becoming human. Only women, who have remained what they were at their birth, can instruct us; and if they did not exist, we men, in our paper swathings, would go to the ground past praying for. Would E. have taken seriously the passage in one of my letters in which, in reply to your strongly expressed belief on the matter, I affirm that Paris is refreshing and rejoicing me to a high degree, that it is magnificent, etc.? I scarcely think so, and imagine she must have understood the irony better than the royal Kammermusikus. To touch upon one more practical point. As I have still to do with the member of the widows' committee, so I tell you that, in regard to the Wigand affair, I am not so insolently at ease as to be able to do without the two hundred francs, for I quite counted on them when I calculated my expenses. Misled by the prospect of twenty louis d'or, I ordered clothes in Paris, which I much needed. Now I see myself compelled to give a bill to my tailor. In order to pay this, Wigand's louis d'or are absolutely essential. Can he send them by return to Paris? If so, write this by return to the address: "Albert Franck, libraire, rue Richelieu, 69." If not, I shall expect the money at Zurich, old address, or Orell and Füssli. I am borrowing it now from my Zurich friends. Or do you imagine, because you think me in clover (oh, you bad chamber-musician!), that I would also expose all my affairs with my tailor before the world?
It is impossible for me to conduct my overture myself in Paris, for this reason, that it will not be performed there at all, as there was not proper time for rehearsal — perhaps "next year." I received this answer on the eve of my departure from Paris, and truly in a very pleasant quarter. I think I never laughed so loud and so from the bottom of my heart as on that evening and in that place.
Enough! I have nicely washed your head; and now I will smear a little pomatum on it! Are you glad to learn that I am a happy man? If you wish me to be happy so long as I live, do not measure me this life by its length, but by its contents. Time is the absolute Nothing: only that which makes one forget it, that which annihilates it, is Something. Do you desire a life only black and white, you can have it as long as you like: if you want true colour in it, don't trouble any more about its length. If I die soon, I have done and completed what I could do and complete, for I can only accomplish what is possible to my nature; if, at last, it wears out, it has performed what it could, and what it never could perform except by continually consuming itself.
So, I am happy; if you are sensible, you will all be so. In Zurich I have already a lady violin-pupil for you; she wishes to be a member of our orchestra. But more about that another time. Much is happening. Be sensible, and if you no longer play the chamber-musician, we can all be happy before the world attains to like happiness.
Farewell! Everything must have an end. So also this letter! Greetings to Elsa Marie!
Your
Richard W.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 11