Dear Friend,
I write a couple of lines out of my turn, i.e., without first waiting for news from you.
Your article on the Tannhäuser overture, with which you have truly surprised me and touched me to the heart, specially prompts me to do so. But quite apart from the effect which it must make upon me so far as I am personally concerned (you must take flattered vanity as little as possible into account), the article is excellent, and truly in every respect; and though the contents are ideal, it is at the same time practical to a degree beyond anything within my knowledge. I congratulate you on it, and strongly beg you to let me have a copy for my house archives! I have long been wishing to ask you about another matter, but it has hitherto escaped my memory, and so I at once touch upon it. You wrote to me once that you had received news of Röckel through Dr. Fl. Schulze; I would thank you to go to the same source to find out if by chance I could write to him, and to whom and how I should have to address for that purpose. You told me R. had received writings, i.e., pamphlets of mine. Has he also received my Kunstwerk der Zukunft, and would it be possible to send him Oper und Drama?
There have been some strange goings on as regards this book. After I had promised A., and broken off with Weber, I received from the latter at last another letter, in which he proposes, in return for the manuscript, to pay me down twenty louis d'or at once, and again the same sum after the sale of the edition of 500 copies. Naturally I had to close with him. But how the whole thing has been delayed!
Next week I shall be able to send you my pamphlet published here, "Ein Theater in Zürich." Don't be astonished if I send it to you unfranked: I have a reason for doing so.
Offers have been made to me from Weimar for a new opera. I should have to deliver it by 1st July, 1852, and up to then, and during that time, I should be paid altogether 500 thalers. Now I have come to a new determination with regard to the subject I ought to take in hand. If I settled on Siegfried's Death with the serious view to performance next year in Weimar, the whole thing would appear to me a perfect impossibility. Whence should I get actors and a public? All the winter through I have been tormented by an idea, which of late has so completely taken hold of me that I will now realize it. Did I not once write to you about a genial subject? It was that of the youth who sets out "in order to learn fear," and who is so stupid as never to be able to learn it. Think of my alarm when I suddenly discover that this youth is no other than the young Siegfried, who wins the hoard and awakes Brünnhilde. The scheme is now ready. I am for the moment collecting my strength so as to be able next month to write the poem of Young Siegfried. In July I set to work at the music; and I have such bold confidence in the warmth of the subject and in my powers of endurance, that I think, by next year, I shall start with undiminished strength the composition of Siegfried's Death. Young Siegfried has the decided advantage that it presents the important myth in the form of a play to the public, just as a fairy tale is presented to a child. Here everything makes a plastic effect by means of sharp sensuous impressions, here everything is understood at once; and then if the serious Siegfried's Death follows, the public knows all which has there to be presupposed or even only hinted at, and my game is won — all the more as by my Young Siegfried, which throughout appeals far more to the popular conscience, and which is less heroic than filled with the gladsome mirth of young manhood, the actors are practically exercised and prepared to solve the more important task of Siegfried's Death. But each will in itself be an independent piece. They are only to be presented to the public in succession the first time; afterwards each, according to taste or means, can be given quite by itself. Besides, I have no longer a general, abstract public in my mind, but a special one, to which I purpose to address myself (mittheilen), so that by it I may be understood.
Now farewell! Don't sweat too much over the pianoforte score. Write to me soon how you are, and when you are coming (the chief thing).
Greetings at home, and to the R.'s, from your
R. 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. 26