Dear Friend,
I have gone back to my old mood, and the devil has hold of me again. No cure in the world can keep me from disagreeable outward impressions: their evil influence must ever trouble the inward spring, and bring it to a painful stand-still. Again am I stranded, with all my wishes and aspirations. Beyond endurance I clearly see — I feel that all my undertakings must remain unsatisfied and without aim! Alas! alas! wherever I knock, each of my plans becomes a barren grey impossibility! I can no longer in any way deceive myself. I lack the only thing which could keep me in a happy state of illusion — sympathy, true, responsive sympathy. All with whom I come into contact hang down the head, sigh, are silent, and relapse after this effort into their old callous state. You are really the only one to whom I can still turn for sympathy, for you alone possess the energy at least to answer — although I cannot help noticing that your letters are written on as small a sheet as possible, with the lines as wide apart as possible. Often, as was the case with your two last letters, I ask myself, "Does he find it so difficult to fill the sheet with strokes of the pen?" Others do not even answer me. I asked Liszt for his medallion for Christmas — no answer.
Under circumstances which I will not enumerate, but which from my mood you will recognize, I cannot exactly make out whether this stop to my well-being really comes from within or merely from without. I have nothing to complain of with regard to my bodily functions: but my nerves! I grant that, of late, I have over-exerted myself with the cure. The misfortune was that I had no doctor in whom I placed confidence: my lively mood was principally the result of the over-excitement of my vital powers, for in spite of the liveliness, my agitation was intense. Still it was a lively agitation. Reaction naturally set in; but, if only some joy, some outward influence resulting in comfort, could happen, it would assume another character, one of pleasant repose. But great Heaven! how dull, how tedious, and how flat does everything in this outer world drop loose from me, so that only the regret remains that I should ever have counted on what comes from without! and this repentance is of a terribly painful kind. Now I prey again on my vitals, and prey and prey, until to satisfy my hunger I am utterly consumed!
Really, I have been thus for a long time! If I look back on my life I must say to myself that little nourishment came from without to satisfy so needy a soul. Never, not even for a moment, have I felt tender comfort: only angles to stumble against, only sharp points to tread on! And now by way of diversion — I do not say reward (for here there is nothing to reward) — no! in order to be giving myself once more the chance of others preying on me, which for the future can be my only consolation — by way of diversion, I only desired — ah! why should I repeat it? Go to concerts and to the theatre, and amuse yourself!!
Nothing will come of my concert: I have given it up. I can no longer bring myself to undertake anything by halves, a patch-work. Its aimlessness and the impossibility of satisfying myself presented themselves once more before me in all their nakedness. Through the obduracy of my friends all further plans connected with it were frustrated in advance. If, in the first thought of this concert, I only wished for once to hear the Prelude to Lohengrin, I now renounce the luxurious apparatus necessary for the attainment of this wish. Strange that it should be with me as with Beethoven: he could not hear his music because he was deaf (nothing else could have prevented him). I cannot hear mine, because I am more than deaf, because I do not live in the world, because I wander about among you like a ghost, because the whole wide world is full of … fools! Ah, dear friend, at least write a lot about me, fill the newspapers, and at least I shall become right famous; then I shall have something for my pains!
Ah! if I were not to rise from my bed to-morrow, if I were never more to wake to this loathsome life, yes — then I should be even happier than the R.'s when listening to Tannhäuser!!! Good-bye for to-day!
Eleven o'clock past! again nothing! Good! This letter must be sent off to-day; I cannot allow such unburdening of my mind to lie in the drawer.
Say, is it not unmanly of me to pour out my complaints thus? Why do I not rather imitate my lady S., show a smiling face although I suffer, pretend to have no feeling, i.e., lie and dissimulate, so as to become, if no true human being, yet as great a man as possible, one who is "superior" to his fate, i.e., plays a part, and would fain be otherwise than as he is; "represent" something — any visionary idea, as, for example, L. Bonaparte represented "society" — and all that to please the dear sweet Philistines, so that they may say, "Ah, by Jove! there's a man for you!" No; all who can take pleasure in my labours, i.e., in my life and works, shall know that their joy comes of my griefs, of my greatest misery!
Dear friend! I often have my own ideas about "art," and, for the most part, I cannot help thinking that if we had real life, we should need no art. Art begins just there, where real life ends, where there is nothing more before us; then we cry out to art: "I wish!" I cannot conceive how a truly happy man can ever think of "art." Only in life is power to do. Is our "art" anything more than a confession of our impotence? For sure; at least our art is of this kind, and so is all the art which, in our present dissatisfaction with life, we can imagine. It is nothing more than "desire expressed as clearly as is possible to us." To win back my youth, to possess health, nature, a devoted wife, healthy children — yes! I would sacrifice all my art! Take it! Give me the other! Ah! it would indeed be droll, if all our zest for art were but an empty dream! Well, farewell for to-day! You have probably had enough.
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. 52