Dearest Friend,
My wife often does me the wrong of keeping something up her sleeve at convenient seasons, and then bringing it out at an inconvenient one, when she can no longer help herself. Thus lately she informed me that her parents would have to move on the 1st of April, and up to that time would be in urgent need of help. We can just manage here up to May, when I again expect money from R.; but I can no longer undertake to send money away from here: so I should be right glad if an application were made to me from Leipzig respecting the price of the Tannhäuser score; in a letter to Rietz I asked twenty-five louis d'or. Had they accepted these terms, I meant first of all to let you have this sum, so that you could take from it not only what moneys you have laid out, but also twenty-five thalers for my poor parents-in-law. Unfortunately I have had to wait in vain for an answer from Leipzig, and I must therefore look about for other means of help in the pressing emergency just mentioned. With regard to my debt to you, I had already determined to ask the R.'s to send their next remittance through you (to which, indeed, they do not object). You would keep back what you have spent for me, and we could always go on thus, for as a rule in every half-year you will have spent money on my account. If you approve of this, I have only in the present emergency to ask if you could get me the necessary twenty-five thalers for my parents-in-law on credit, or lend it yourself? I really hope that this will be possible to so thoroughly substantial a man as yourself, and, in this hope, I beg you to see after my parents-in-law as quickly as possible; anyhow, before the 1st of April. At the beginning of May you will then receive from the R.'s (to which effect I shall write to them at the proper moment) the half-year's subsidy for me, out of which you will at once repay yourself. I should be extremely glad if the matter could be so arranged; it can be done, can't it?
The performance of the Tannhäuser overture has now taken place: it surpassed all my expectations, for it really went admirably. You can best judge of this by its effect, which was quite terrific. I do not speak of the burst of applause which immediately followed it, but of the symptoms of that effect, which only came gradually to my knowledge. The women, in particular, were turned inside out; the impression made on them was so strong that they had to take refuge in sobs and weeping. Even the rehearsals were crowded, and marvellous were the accounts given to me of the first effect, which expressed itself chiefly as profound sorrowfulness; only after this had found relief in tears came the agreeable feeling of the highest, exuberant joy. Certainly this effect was only made possible by my explanation of the subject-matter of the overture; but though my own work again made a most powerful impression on me, I was quite astounded at this unusually drastic operation. A woman it was who solved the riddle: people look on me as a merciless preacher against the sin of hypocrisy. After what I have accomplished with it here, I begin to set some store by this piece of music: I really cannot think of any other tone-poem capable of exercising a like powerful effect on sensitive, intelligent natures. But the concert-hall is its place, and not the theatre, where it is a mere prelude to the opera. There I should propose only to give the first tempo of the overture: the rest — in the fortunate event of its being understood — is too much in front of the drama; in the opposite event, too little.
The day after the performance Schmidt wrote to me from Frankfort that he thought he could venture Tannhäuser shortly. As a preliminary, he begged me to let him conduct the Overture and the March at a grand concert. I at once sent him, for that purpose, several hundred copies of the explanation.
It is all right now about the Flying Dutchman: it will be produced here in the second half of April. I can no longer prevent it: my friends here press me too much. A scene-painter and machinist have been specially engaged for the staging of the opera: for the orchestra, etc., everything possible is to be done. The singers are well chosen. And so the performance will be good — perhaps very good. The Tannhäuser overture has given me anew a great opinion of my talent for making the impossible possible. Would that the R.'s could be present at the performance here!
At last I get a post-office slip which promises news from you. I had already ceased trying to imagine what must have happened to you, that you had completely given up writing to me. I shall wait till the packet comes from the post, and then close these lines!
I have just read your Figaro letter, and thank you heartily for it. I will write to you more in detail soon, with a parcel which I have to send you.
How I reproach myself when, through some remark concerning your conduct, I cause you to offer explanations. Truly, in our intercourse, if one of us two need to make apology, it is I, once and always. Pay no attention, if now and then something in my letters vexes you. Unfortunately I am often in such bitter humour that it almost affords me a cruel relief to offend some one; this is a calamity which only makes me the more deserving of pity. Only, pay no attention to it! But be ever assured that I love you from my inmost heart, and that you are often my only consolation.
I am now again frightfully fagged; but in the face of spring, and of setting to work at my poem, I take fresh courage. Call me not vain if I confess to you that the wonderful effects which I produce around me restore to me now and then a pleasant consciousness of my existence: again it is always the "ever womanly" ("Ewig-Weibliche") which fills me with sweet illusions and warm thrills of life's delight. The moist, shining eye of a woman often saturates me with fresh hope. But you do not complain if I hide myself from you and hold back!
Your news about R. rejoiced me! In his position it is only a question of stoicism, and of showing no weak spot to his torturers! May I be accursed if ever an enemy shall hear me complain: against such we must be bold and hard as stone. If ever I wish to rid me of my life, I know for what I will venture it — however, I will not boast.
Farewell for to-day; greetings to Siegfried!
Your
R. W.
Don't let me wait again so long for a letter.
If Brendel wants to have a joke with a portrait of me, he ought not to take the old drawing, which I no longer resemble; better from a new daguerreotype.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 58