My Dear Brother Fischer,
Your heartfelt letter, in which you have made me your brother, I ought to have answered at once, in order to express to you my joy thereat; but was I not right in assuming that I need not assure you of this joy — that your own heart would tell you better than pen, ink, and paper how thankfully and gladly I received your outpourings, how happy they have made me? Heine has given you my greetings, embraces, and exclamations, and probably told you generally how I am. You can get quite recent news from him about me, which I have thus no need to repeat here; I am therefore glad not to have to speak much about myself, and I will instead now sing your song of praise.
How is it that we have held and still hold together, in spite of so many points of difference? That under other conditions you wish such people as myself to the devil, but me you love, and wish me well? That I would unmercifully fall tooth and nail upon many a one who in some respects resembled you, yet now desire nothing better than right fervently to embrace your portly body? I will tell you exactly the reason. It is this: that everything in the one of us which does not please the other is not his inmost being, but only certain peculiarities brought about by our conditions of life, which in our contact with this life now assume this and now that surface which we present outermost as we run against and jostle one another in this world. Now, when a violent collision has taken place, a moment arrives when it must be decided whether or no the one shall break deliberately and completely with the other; and it must as often have happened to you as to myself, that after one single jostle with certain persons we have found it better to leave them quite alone, recognizing by that occasion that our whole inner being is essentially different, that the one acts from a warm impulse of the heart, the other from consuming egoism. But when we feel inclined to have another bout with one another and send the hair a-flying, it is because we long to see what the man looks like without his hair; for we know that this man is just of our own kidney, and the hairs which one lets fly are nothing more than outer coverings, which have settled on us from difference of age, of bringing up, mode of life, position, etc., and which in such a violent encounter go off thither whence they came — in a measure to the devil.
I have often called you a Philistine; but then we have also called R., for example, a Philistine. Are you R.'s companion and like to him? Heaven forfend! R.'s essential nature is as repulsive to you as to me; and why? Just because the Philistine nature is the essence of his being — because, with all his gifts, he is without character, envious, cowardly, and submissive; because a man of his weakness and want of courage, for love of never a Cause, but only of his own dear Self, which he does not even know how to defend, would fain have everything maintained just in the way most comfortable to himself and his lukewarmness. Adieu! let such persons flock with birds of their own feather; but no one else can make common cause with them. Now, dearest Brother Fischer, that is the very opposite of yourself! For what has always kept us together, but love of and joy in this our art? One of us understood it so, the other so; but we always understood it from our very hearts; for us it was always an end, and not a means. Your life, your age, and your experiences had placed you there where, confronted with the wretched art-tavernry of our time, you thought but of preserving the good which you have rescued for yourself therefrom: you would leave the scoundrels lying strewn on right and left, and gather the sound thing wherever you might meet with it, so as to refresh yourself therewith as with a sweet remembrance, and to keep yourself personally from the general rottenness. With all your love for the Cause, you have yet become hereby somewhat of an egotist. You think: pshaw! let the muck remain muck; as for me, I shall still hold on to what is good and invigorating to the heart. You were in danger here of becoming a downright self-opinionated man, nay, a true Philistine — had not another, a younger and a wilder fellow, come, who will not let the muck remain muck, and seeks with both his hands to sweep it away. For the present he is raising a stench about you: you are annoyed, and want to fall upon the disturber of peace: now the hairs fly about, you recognize your man, and at last are driven to take the peace-disturber to your heart, as affectionately as you have done me. So it is: chance things alone divide us, such as age and the externals of life, perhaps even of our faculties; but not that which is indispensable in both of us, and that is the inner nature. You love the same thing that I love. You only see it otherwise than I, because you use quite a different pair of spectacles: you want, above all things, rest; I, above all things, unrest. That you are able to love me — that saves you from the Philistine egoism into which the devil would willingly draw you, but from which your fresh, warm, true heart preserves you. But for me nothing can be more blessed than to be beloved by a dear, honourable fellow like you, and from this you may judge of the degree in which I return your love. Get leave of absence, and convince yourself, if you will not believe it.
Heine will tell you how I am. The earnestness of life announces itself — i.e., I do not quite know what I shall really have to live on; that, indeed, is nowadays the "earnestness of life," and people understand the term no other way. Does my Paris opera interest you so much? Yes, it is not so bad a scheme, only in the best case it is not an affair which can be settled quite so quickly. I cannot write music to the first French libretto that comes: of my ideas for a text not one is suitable for Paris — at least, not as it is now. If things there were as they ought to be, and as they very probably soon will be, then I should know what to be about. You will be alarmed when you hear it, so let Heine present it to you with a little of his costume-ornamentation. I have already given up the plan of taking yourself, as choirmaster, for the subject of an opera. If it is possible, i.e., if I have money, I will travel to Paris in January: there the overture to Tannhäuser shall be played at a Conservatoire concert, and perhaps on this occasion I shall settle with my poet on a plan. I have not a great desire for Paris: reflect a little about it, and you will understand why.
There is a concert here to-day, in which the great duet from the Second Act of the Flying Dutchman will be given, also a fantasia for pianoforte and clarionet on Tannhäuser. For the rest, I go on living here in my usual way, i.e., in a homely and retired fashion, and I am glad that my good wife is with me. My surroundings consist entirely of resident Swiss folk: I scarcely note that there are German exiles here. It is beautiful here, and I would work to my heart's content if I were only a little assured as to my livelihood. I have many plans in my head, which probably will in time find the proper way to publicity. I have just finished my last literary work: now my order of the day is, nothing but artistic work.
My wife would not part with your portrait: it hangs before her over the work-table, and rejoices my heart every time I look at it. Ah me! what is going to become of our dear Germany? I know of nothing that goes on in the world, for I scarcely ever read any newspapers now. Shall we ever see each other again? Let us, at least, hear often from each other: that makes up for it to some extent!
Let us hope! He who has his heart in the right place, to him belongs the future: he who is faint-hearted, he has his portion, and always carries it about with him — I mean in his heels. When first I become faint-hearted — then, farewell world! Better dead than living! Dear brother, should things remain as they are, and you ever get your pension, come then and settle down with us in Switzerland. Farewell for to-day! Receive an affectionate embrace, and hold me in kind remembrance, which becomes you thoroughly well, especially in my eyes! Minna sends quite immense greetings! Farewell! and soon send news to your faithful brother,
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 100