Child! Child, dearest child,
Here comes a terrible tale! The master has made something good once again!
I have just been playing through the finished worked-out first half of my act, and had to tell myself what dear God once told himself when he found that All was good! I have nobody to praise me, any more than dear God had then — circa 6000 years back — and so, among other things, I told myself: Richard, you're a d——l of a fellow! —
Eh, I can understand now, why the lumber gave me such attacks of hypochondria! One has to keep reaching out God knows where, you see, to fetch the smallest pebble for one's building; and for all its grief and misery, it has to sound fine in the end, and insinuate itself in such a fashion that one gets a trouble round the heart without ever marking what poor stuff it is! It all goes off capitally: I have found no lengths and no monotonies; quite the opposite, passionate life up to arrogance, to laughter of jest! — No: such a thing I haven't made before; you'll marvel, for once, when you hear it. —
Now for quiet, peace and some smiling of fate, soon to complete the second half as well! Then I must be as new-born! — Help me, yourself! else no one helps me. Outside there all of them are dolts, all, all! —
Adieu for to-day!
It really was my Rigi day again to-day, so of course it's sweetly raining!
What says Wesendonck to Garibaldi?
A thousand blessings on you!
R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 81