Dear Lady-friend,
For days and days have I been intending to write dear Myrrha and thank her for the share I'm sure I must ascribe her in the lovely cushion; but she also must get used to my ingratitude, which doesn't consist in actual want of thanks, but in so frequent omission to attest them. Such attestations are agreeable, flattering effusions, wherewith one flatters and delights oneself the most: I seldom come to execution even of such pleasant projects now; all trends with me towards a last and serious close, so it is but with sadness I can look at e'en the flowers strewn upon this final road.
The poem you sent me to-day is very beautiful — quite masterly, I think; only, the point of the legend now appears to me otherwise. There flattering hope is given the nixy, but I for my part understand no hope now, have become impervious to nothing so much as its suasion; in its place I understand that happiness we have not first to hope for, but truly in ourselves are masters of. Perhaps you will remember how I told you once in days gone by, that as life went on I had ever grown more vividly aware that Art would never furnish me a happiness beyond conception till every good of life were reft me, all, all were lost, and any possibility of hoping cut away. I remember also in my thirtieth year, or thereabouts, having asked myself in inward doubt if I really did possess the grit for an artistic individuality of highest rank; in my works I could still trace influence and imitation, and only with misgivings did I dare look forward to my further evolution as a thoroughly original producer. Well, at the time when I told you the above — that period of strange passion — on a lonely walk one day the possibility suddenly occurred to me of losing one boon whose possible possession must from of old have seemed to me unthinkable; and then I felt the time would come for Art to acquire a quite new meaning in my eyes, a meaning altogether wondrous, — the time when not a hope would ever have the power to snare my heart again.
Thus has the full meaning of the old Messiah-legend also dawned on me at last. They were waiting for a liberator and redeemer, of the seed of David, a king of Israel: everything came true; palms were strewn before him; — only, the unexpected occurred, for he said to them, "My kingdom is not of this world." So do all the nations yearn and strive for their Messiah, who shall fulfil their wishes of this life: he comes, and says to them, Give wishing up itself! — 'Tis the ultimate solution of the great Wish-riddle, — which you must admit that your friend Hutten and the others did not understand.
Myself, I have no wish left, save to be able to work. Even to the representation of my works my wishes extend no longer, and compulsion thereto I accept as an unavoidable calamity. To Vienna I have been definitively invited for the autumn, to produce the Tristan: that disturbs me now. Yet it irks me also to be driven in my work, for, the way I'm working now, I cannot do it quickly. Assured leisure were what I most could wish: if I cannot attain it, I suppose I still must feel the pain of life; but its anticipation would enhance the pleasure of creating. I should like a haven in the most complete and utter solitude, and that is very hard to gain. —
Accept my felicitations yourself; give my kind regards and thanks to Myrrha, as also to your husband, to whom I still owe hearty thanks for his last letter!
From my heart Yours
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 138