Dear Theodor,
I have waited too long for a letter from you not to feel bound to answer immediately on receipt of the one at length arrived, though this answer may not contain all which meanwhile has accumulated for communication to you. First of all, I am sincerely sorry at the great distress which your children cause you: the trouble with the youngest, after what you have passed through with the elder one, is truly affecting. Yes, if I knew this kind of trouble, I should be quite another sort of person! I hope Siegfried is now going on more favourably: at least, I gather this from the close of your letter — would my good wishes could help!
We are alone in the country here with Julia; K. is with Hahn, where he must patiently remain. Hahn considers his case a very bad one. Julia seems to have taken a great fancy to me: anyhow, she does all I tell her.
I have commenced my cure in an orderly manner: it consists — besides dieting, from which a glass of good wine from time to time is not excluded — of a cold bath in the morning and a tepid one (22 degrees), lasting a quarter of an hour, of an evening. This has a soothing and gently bracing effect on me. Above all, the open air, in which I roam about two or three hours of a morning before I settle to work, does me a world of good. I do not work for more than two hours at a stretch; formerly by working for five or six hours I greatly overtaxed my nerves. Now I have finished the complete sketch of the Walküre (!): to-morrow I attack the verses. I am more struck than ever with the broad grandeur and beauty of my subject-matter: my whole manner of viewing the world has found in it its fullest artistic expression. How I wish you were here, that I might oftener impart things to you which I must now save up until I can place the whole complete before you. After this work I shall write no more poetry! Nothing higher and more complete can my powers produce. Once the verses finished, I shall from that moment become entirely musician again, only at some future time to become conductor. I almost hope that I may win or preserve the life to do it!
I had much to tell you, suggested by reading articles about myself; perhaps I'll do it later on. On lately reading over Julius Schäffer's first two articles about myself in the N. B. M. Z., I much regretted that the man had not yet read my Vorwort. What, for example, he says about alliterative verse (because he does not find a trace of it in Lohengrin) would then have been impossible. What he says about the "dissolution of the individuality of keys" might lead to an instructive article. I have shown in the third volume of Oper und Drama that harmony only becomes something real (not merely an abstraction) in the polyphonic symphony — i.e., in the orchestra — and thus the imaginary individuality of keys (Hitzschold must excuse) passes over to the real individuality of instruments, of their manifold colouring, and finally of the mode of execution. So, by clinging to the "individuality" of keys, one clings to a chimera, which anyhow formerly became as much of a dogma with us as the good God Himself. On the contrary, the keys, like the tones in general, only become characteristic in the instruments, and, finally, in the human voice with words. Thus, for example, the characteristic individuality of a key (E major or E flat major) is very prominent in a violin or a wind instrument, and it is, therefore, a piece of slip-shod criticism to consider the key by itself, and the instruments not at all, or else also by themselves. The instrumental musicians of the past century as yet knew this not: they worked from the harmonic dogma; but let one only compare their instrumentation with Beethoven's or with mine. Whoever in judging my music divides the harmony from the instrumentation does me as much injustice as he who divides my music from my poetry, my song from the words! However, in all such things I was wrong to have made known my theoretical views too early; I am still owing the real matter, the work of art, which was certainly ripe in me before the theory. Apropos! do protest against the statement that I am working at an "art-work of the future"; bid the silly folk learn to read before they write!
In regard to Reissiger's oratorio you were quite wrong to send me explanations: your word is sufficient, and I am firmly convinced that the oratorio is of such a nature that you could praise it. Already your praise of a sonata of R.'s induced me — a most exceptional thing — to go through that composition; so I believe you.
As a rule, do not take it amiss if I do not always say something about your articles: they always give me great pleasure. But I surely need not tell you that I do not think much of the rest of the paper: I also believe you that it cannot be otherwise. Yet I cannot see why not one of the important points which I have started should be discussed, instead of continual criticisms of Trios and Études. I was by no means displeased with the notice of Cellini: on the contrary, it was very good. But instead of piano rubbish — at any rate, just now, at the turning-point of the journal — surely something different might find a place! How can a man like Herwegh, for instance, think of expressing his thoughts between these "Ops. 6 and 7"? There is so much purely commercial music that no thought can be taken of us. Lately I received the poem of the Pilgrimage of the Rose. Why does it occur to no one to grasp by the root a work like that of Schumann's — i.e., above all to point out the fearful wretchedness of the poem, and to ask what sort of a composer he must be who could feel inspired by such a piece of patchwork to write an important work, and what such music could possibly contain? The same sort of thing should have been done with the poems for the prize song offered last year by the Cologne people. But enough of this!
Liszt conducts Tannhäuser to-day (the 31st), in presence of the Empress of Russia! By no means bad! The Moritz wishes also to take Tannhäuser to Breslau. Well! now I have pretty well done, and can say farewell for to-day! To that I join hearty wishes for the welfare of my little god-child: may they be of help! But to see you right soon again is what I most long for! I always fear, most excellent young man, that you will fade away from me; certainly not in spirit, but in body! What a wretched lot is yours, and what a thing it is to bear it as you do! Yet it must some day come to a stop even with you! Farewell, and strengthen yourself properly in the fresh air! Kind greetings to your wife.
Your
R. W.
Yesterday I wrote to "theatre-master" Hähnel. Get to know the contents of the letter; they will interest you, and perhaps you could be of assistance to me in the matter!
I have found the sheet of Tannhäuser in Fischer's hand, and you shall have it shortly.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 65