Best Friend,
I really do not know how to answer your immense letter in a worthy manner. The reason why I write to you to-day without pressing occasion is, after all, this: that I wish to make a determined break in my poetical work, so as not, by uninterrupted toil, to fall again into the fatal condition from the painful effects of which I have scarcely yet recovered a little. But letter-writing thoroughly exhausts me, as I have now found out, and you may consider it a high honour if I even fill this sheet. Were it not for the continued bad weather I should have gone off for a few days' tramp. I had already mapped out a tour to Glarus and Schwyz. However, with this perpetual grey sky and damp atmosphere, I must give up all idea of a pleasure-trip; though, even in the pouring rain, I keep up my midday walk of at most three or four leagues with a sorry sort of enjoyment. Thus I come to the chapter of health, and I must tell you at once that your account of your own condition has really given me no comfort. Believe me, dearest friend, you exact too much from yourself. With your extremely delicate constitution you ought to lead quite a different kind of life and occupation if you would prosper. You "serve" to your own hurt! I get my strongest proof of what suits you from the fact that you were so well last year when you came to Switzerland, and lounged about in proper style. From that you can see what does you good. Your dispassionate temperament preserves you, in the contact with your manner of life and occupation, from violent convulsive attacks, such as I from time to time am subject to; but, instead of that, you pine away, imperceptibly, but chronically. Man cannot live by irony alone; yet in everything which you attempt or do that is the only thing which can help you. You ought to be able to lead a pleasant, easy-going life, entirely according to your inclination. How to accomplish that is a matter for you to study as speedily as possible. How I wish I already had a great practical success, to be able to assist you to that which you cannot afford out of your own means alone! For the present, as I cannot help you, I can only take the next best course, and determine you — formally backed up by medical opinion — to get a change in your appointment, so that you might have (at least) two clear months' leave of absence every summer. If you cannot obtain this, or if an attempt is made to squeeze something out of this minimum, then give up entirely your present position, in which you have the least facility of all for getting away, and become again simple fiddler, yet with the silent resolve to take things easily, as others (à la K.) do — i.e., when you find fiddling overtaxes you, or that disgust for it is becoming too strong for you to resist, then get on a loose end for weeks or months, just because you could not endure it any longer. But in summer take three months' leave of absence, and when, finally, people begin to kick a bit — well, get a pension, come to me with your bag and baggage, and we together, with your whole family, will manage somehow or other. Surely you will not be so foolish as to be prevented by any feeling of ambition. I even hope that in this matter you have no scruples of honour, for these conditions have nothing in common with honour. Therefore I urge upon you: give up your present position, if you cannot arrange it quite to suit your own ease — and if this is absolutely impossible, then make yourself at ease in whatever service you take, even if your loitering should end in your having a pension thrust upon you. This is the only possible way of keeping yourself right. Without it, in all probability, you must soon be quite used up. Reflect whether it can possibly be otherwise. I entreat you to give up this abject feeling of duty. Be unbeseeming — that alone can save you! I am glad to hear that the wet packing has been of good service for your hoarseness. Take care of yourself! So long as this hoarseness lasts, give up all official work. I bind you to this, if you have any love for me. Do it for my sake: go gaily off till your throat is perfectly well again. I know how it was that some time back Lehrs, one of my dearest friends in Paris, came to grief. The poor wretch, who was afflicted in a similar manner, could not stop work and give himself up to pleasant idlings, when he could easily have been cured. Do what I tell you! I shall write no more to you, unless you can announce to me in your next letter that you have said farewell to all service for the present. Think! this must be done, whatever happens! Listen to my entreaty!
I much long to go to Paris, to make personal acquaintance with Lindemann. For the present Herwegh is my physician. His physical and physiological knowledge is great, and in every respect he is more sympathetic to me than any doctor. In sufferings such as ours none but a friend can advise us, and a physician only if he is this as well.
I also have been in a bad state as regards my stomach, and this was chiefly the result of that cursed milk-drinking. I now share the conviction of all who regard milk diet as folly. Milk is the food of sucklings — yes, and drunk warm from the mother's breast; but every grown-up suckling feeds on developed and intermediary substances. No animal drinks cold milk, neither does any natural man. The cattle in the Alps eat cheese or a fermented drink prepared from milk. How can we be so foolish as to offer to the same stomach which, on the one hand, takes prepared food (even prepared meat), this other entirely raw substance? And we, too, with our terribly intense brain activity, and the whole manner of our life! The right thing for us is to enjoy everything, but within the bounds of moderation, as taught by self-observation and experience. As coffee (generally) is hurtful to my nerves, I take roast meat — preferably game — early in the day, with a draught or two of good wine. Your oatmeal gruel does not please me: do take game — hare! Game, while providing a maximum of nourishment, requires a minimum of digestive power; and it is imperative for you to gain strength through nourishment.
My warm baths, of 24 degrees, for half an hour before going to bed, suit me well now. It would have been all up with me but for this bath. It soothes my nerves, and always gives me sound sleep. Lindemann advised me, if I wished to recover quickly, to take a half-hour's bath of the same kind in the morning, instead of my present short bath in water chilled to 20. I wet my head (at every bath) repeatedly with cold water. Perhaps I may yet have recourse to the full early bath. Our hydropathic physicians, collectively and individually, do not know enough about nervous disorders. To constitutions like mine warm baths alone are of any use, while cool ones entirely ruin them. If once I can get my nerves right, I shall be quite a different man.
Well, enough of this. It would be enough to fill the whole sheet, to which, however, I must add one thing more. This very moment the postman interrupted me, and brought me an immense delight — a letter from the Breslau Capellmeister about the extraordinary success which the first performance of Tannhäuser has had there. The man writes quite beside himself with joy and satisfaction, and I am so enraptured by it that I cannot write any more to-day to you, as the quiet for that has quite gone from me — and this time in so pleasant a manner. More to-morrow.
October 11th.
You have probably received the Breslau news direct. How much it rejoiced me I told you yesterday. I will now conclude the letter with a few quasi-business matters.
I had thought by now to receive news from you about the Leipzig matter. Perhaps it may come to-day. I mean whether the score is sent back.
The Dresden Tannhäuser is no advertisement for me: they may even do there what they like with the ending! Dresden can be of no more use to me, as it has never been of use — it has, indeed, harmed me; but it cannot even do that any more. It can only sink deeper into my indifference. Enough; the remembrances of the Dresden Tannhäuser are a torture to me. Now, with regard to the new performance, I have arrived at a … completely. So give yourself no trouble about the ending — at least, not for my sake. If you wish to remonstrate with L. for his insolence to me, let this be a matter quite apart.
I enclose the correction of the "leap" in the vocal part. You will recognize my astounding talent for polyphony!
[Musical example.]
If only Brendel could alter the title: Chamber- and Home-Music! My fate compels me to take into my hand every fresh number of the paper. But this superscription is the ruin of me: it is every time a heavy blow to me!
I have, Heaven knows, nothing more to tell you. So I will wait for the postman: perhaps I may then find something further to say to you.
(Lachner is seen to. J. Schäffer has written to me. When you write to him give best greetings from me, and make excuses for me if I should not answer at once. That kind of letter always exhausts me. Would a score of Tannhäuser be of any service to him and to Franz? Copies of the old version — have you enough in hand?)
Well, nothing has come; only your fugue. I must carefully study it before I reply to you about it. Heavens! you clever fellow! Fugues and maps! But with your map you will not entrap me home. I am no longer a Saxon! But I have been nearly everywhere there. I have Lohengrinned at Dittersbach (on the Schönhöhe).
I should have liked to send a longer answer, but time is up, as in the meantime I had to write to Berlin. Johanna had written a long letter.
Farewell, and soon send me good news about yourself, especially that you will obey me — do you hear?
Good-bye!
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. 85