Best of Friends!
I have come now to a point where my situation must be settled in some definite way: it is too bad that this extremity should occur just now, when external circumstances have all combined most unfavourably. But constant dodging and delaying is only getting me more deeply involved in debt, and now that I still see a possibility of my atoning, through renouncement and the utmost limitation, for the culpability and error of the past 15 years of my life, this is the time, therefore, when some arrangement should be concluded.
At every projected agreement with my creditors, I tacitly reserved the publication of my three operas — which belongs to me — as a means of settling with you later on, and I made no mention of this when I arranged settlement with my other creditors by means of assignments of my salary. Herr Steuerprokurator Fleck, my attorney, found it impossible to come to any satisfactory agreement with my creditors unless a capital were raised that would be sufficient to cancel at once the various items which, while not so great in amount, were nevertheless the most urgent. Circumstances made it impossible to find such a capital: then it seemed to me that the most desirable solution would be the chance of finding a purchaser for my business who would pay cash. The amount of the purchase-price would be decided equitably and according to the circumstances: and an honorarium would of course be out of the question; nevertheless, this would be of deep and lasting help to me, for it would permit an arrangement with my creditors that would be reasonable and at the same time would supply me with the means of going on. The more I think over the matter, the more I am convinced that only you, best friend, can and must be this purchaser. My only well-founded hope for the future rests with this publishing title to my works; in it lies the source of future income, and this cannot be assigned to a stranger, in view of my great indebtedness to you, because it is exactly this that offers the only prospect of my being able to satisfy you.
Here our mutual interests meet (Fleck is also of the same opinion): if you acquire my business, then you will by this means secure the only valid guarantee of recovering gradually what you loaned to me. And if you concluded the purchase in such a way that we might at the same time deduct from the established price the 2,000 thalers that you advanced to me towards the business, then it would be only a matter of time before you would earn from the business the very amount which I owe you in addition; however, to arrange this, one needs to have much confidence in the value of my work, and this, to be sure, one can't at all lay claim to in any sober business man, but only in a friend, whose inner feeling, whose belief in a better appointed future for my works, may be taken into consideration. Your conscience, your sympathy for the creations of my spirit can alone be the deciding factor here: perhaps there will be a decision in the near future in Vienna, where I intend to arrange for a performance of my Rienzi as soon as possible. By this purchase you would nevertheless be also more reassured regarding your financial position, because in this way you would be assured of property which even my sudden death could not snatch from you, whereas now every guarantee of surety depends on my life.
It would be an attorney's task to settle this purchase and at the same time the whole matter of my indebtedness to you: I therefore request you, urgently, to call upon Herr Fleck tomorrow (Sunday) morning, for the purpose of discussing the matter with him in greater detail. If you make up your mind to do this, then from a business standpoint you would be in the position of the archer who shoots his second arrow to a point where he finds his first one again — from a purely human standpoint, however, you would release me for ever from the torment which robs me of the finest days, months, and years of my creative energy: and that is the only thing which I want to save — this has otherwise nothing to do with my well-being, because I will gladly and joyfully enter upon a life of the greatest privation in order to secure that greatest treasure, peace of mind.
I hope to see you soon, perhaps at my house?
Good-bye!
Your
Richard Wagner
Source: The Letters of Richard Wagner to Anton Pusinelli, trans. and ed. Elbert Lenrow (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), No. 5