My precious Child!
The master has seen Death once again since that All-Souls night last year: this time as friend and benefactor.
A while ago I went to pay a call on Berlioz. I found him just returning home in a lamentable condition; he had just been getting himself electrified, as a last expedient for his ailing nerves. He depicted his torments to me, which, beginning the moment he wakes, increase in mastery every hour. I recognised my sufferings, to the life, and the sources whence they feed to excess; among which I reckon in particular those incredible nervous exertions, entirely foreign to all other men, while conducting or otherwise eagerly rendering. I knew I should be a still greater sufferer than Berlioz himself, were it not that I expose myself so seldom to those exertions now; for I feel that, even as it is, they act more and more destructively upon me. In Berlioz' case, unfortunately, the stomach already is seriously affected; and — trivial as it may sound — Schopenhauer is perfectly right in naming among the chief physiological requirements for Genius a good digestion. Through my extraordinary moderation I have mostly kept that requisite in serviceable order; still, I foresaw in Berlioz' sufferings those probably predestined for myself, and said goodbye to the poor fellow in a frame of general awe.
I had to give my Frenchmen the other half of Tannhäuser; the strain was great, a moral bitterness preponderating; next day a small error of diet (1 glass of red wine with my bouillon at lunch), and soon afterwards a regular catastrophe, which laid me by the heels in a trice. As I lay full length in utter prostration, seized at the body's very citadel, of a sudden I felt heavenly well. Gone was all chagrin, each trouble, every care, all will and must: profoundest accord of my innermost self with my physical condition; silence of all life's passions; repose, entire dropping of the tight-clutched reins of life.
Two hours did I taste this happiness. Then life returned: the nerves twitched again; pain, distress, desire, will, came back; dearth, discomfort — future, confronted me once more. And so I gradually awoke completely, even to troubling about my new — housing. —
Yes! I am housing once more — without faith, without love, without hope, on the bottomless basis of dreamlike indifference! —
So be it then! One belongs not to oneself; and whoso thinks it, merely weens it. —
I am not quite well again yet (what people call well!) — yet I'll add one latest piece of information. The dramatic idyll at Carlsruhe has come to full stop and an ending; Devrient himself has relieved me of the pain of having to refuse his songstress; herself she has declared herself unequal to Isolde. I suppose it's all for the best: in any case, the whole Tristan adventure is postponed for a fairly long time, and the door stands again wide open for other good chances to throng through. Dream the time sweetly away in your Sicily: you'll miss nothing by it. How I wish you open weather, warmth, invigoration, recovery, from the deepest bottom of my heart! Your plan is excellent, and cousin Wesendonck to be praised and extolled for it! —
The Green Hill has arrived: — why to me now this peaceful emblem of repose and innocence?! —
Adieu for to-day. You shall soon hear more.
A thousand greetings to the Lady-friend!
R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 98