What a time it is since I wrote the most excellent Child, — and yet there were a lot of thanks to be said for the dear last letter! —
I'm living dreary, soul-less days away, have zest for nothing in the world, neither for work of any kind, nor for anything else; scarcely can I drive myself to write the most incumbent letter! Perhaps I might describe my state as a preservation of patience: complete uncertainty — is all that I can distantly convey! —
I go out little now: disgust with everything is great. — I am simply trying to kill time, and read Goethe just as it comes; of late, the campaign of 1792. 'Tis a total lethargy, and the fish on dry sand is quite an apt emblem of me.
Liszt and Tausig left a week ago; I was glad to be rid of them — in my present state! No matter who, is not the right one, and naught avails me. How strange must Liszt's occurrence in my life appear to me! I met him first just 20 years ago in Paris, at a time when — in the most precarious outward plight — I had already conceived a great loathing of the world in which he dangled glitteringly and dazzlingly before me; and now, when I have to repent my driving by my fate for once towards that world again, when I am renewing the experience of my youth so thoroughly, and nothing, no pretence, no mirage, can move me any more to lift a finger up to it, — now Liszt must once again be basking in the sun there, under my very eyes! ... No one knows better than himself what it is, that is to be attained there; wherefore it will be judging him more correctly if I assume that, as his object stays denied him too, he likes to intoxicate himself now and then with a semblance ... I couldn't accompany him any-whither, and so saw little of him; but I've promised to visit him for a week or two at Weimar, where he intends bringing out some big symphonic works. —
Ah! my child, if I had not you, my look-out would be bad! Hold firm to that belief, and faithfully! — And let that cover all that I could say! —
But a life I have no longer. Perhaps I shall somewhat pluck up heart again — particularly for work — when I have got away from here; if only that can be effected soon! — The solitary thing to rouse me is the Tristan scheme. Do think it over, how you can get Papa to pass the autumn and a portion of the winter in Vienna this time; I'm sure it would do you good as well! I would let you both look after me, as long as I remained there; for I am going away alone, and shall put up meantime at Kolatschek's. Then you could listen quietly for once to all I shall have brought to a hearing, Tristan, Lohengrin, Holländer and Tannhäuser —: it really ought to make your winter quite a homelike one again. —
Well, we'll have another debate about that. — And now my best and heartiest wishes! And all that's good and kind to Otto, the children, and the whole Green Hill, from Your
Grey R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 123