My best thanks, dearest friend, for your last letter, which came to me quite unexpectedly, for you have weaned me from expecting letters from you, so seldom do you write to me. H. also has again been owing me an answer some time.
I feel so-so; the beautiful spring weather cheers me after a somewhat dreary winter, and I shall begin my poem again. If I lived in Naples, or Andalusia, or one of the Antilles, I should write a great deal more poetry and music than in our grey, misty climate, which disposes one only to abstraction. I am in the midst of rehearsing my Flying Dutchman. Some of my friends here would not leave me in peace; having heard my Tannhäuser overture, they wanted absolutely to have a taste of one of my operas. I allowed myself at last to be talked over, and am now about to introduce to the imagination of my friends a travesty of my opera, as closely resembling it as possible. Everything as regards scenery and orchestra is done to help that resemblance; the singers are not a bit better or worse than everywhere else; so I shall find out what can be done by the best intentions and a fabulous faith in me. So much I am confident in saying, that the performance would not be uninteresting to you, and therefore I invite you quite seriously, after receipt of this letter, to get leave for a week, trust yourself to the railway, and visit me at Zurich. The first performance takes place Wednesday, April 21st, and between that and May 1st there will be two repetitions. Are you no longer capable of this piece of folly? I am sure that you can if you will, and you would rejoice in the joy which your visit would give to me. Nothing else you could do in these days would compensate you for it. Do come! To Germany I shall not return; I have no hope and no wish for it. There are too few people whom I should care to see again, and those few I should like to see anywhere but in Germany. You, my dearest friend, for example, I should like to see in Switzerland. Please contradict most positively the rumour that I have pleaded for grace; if it were to spread and to be seriously believed, I should feel compelled to make a public declaration, which, for every reason, I should like to avoid.
Leave this matter alone; if the return to Germany were open to me, I should certainly use it only to make perhaps an incognito visit to you at Weimar.
Apropos! Ernst was here, and gave concerts, and he told me that the hope of seeing the Flying Dutchman had induced him to remain in Switzerland till the end of this month. You would therefore see him too.
Bring the Hereditary Grand Duchess along with you. As you are going to give the Flying Dutchman at Weimar, you would be interested to see the scenic arrangements which I have made for a small stage.
What is this you have heard about me in connection with your performance of Cellini? You seem to suppose that I am hostile to it. Of this error I want you to get rid. I look upon your undertaking as a purely personal matter, inspired by your liking for Berlioz; what a beast I should be if I were to criticize that liking and that undertaking! If every one would follow the inner voice of his heart as you do, or, better still, if every one had a heart for such a voice as you have, things would soon be changed. Here again I must rejoice in you. But where a pure matter of the heart is submitted to speculative reason, I must find that mistakes creep in which a third person can perceive. In the consequences which, as I am told, you expect from the performance of Cellini, I cannot believe; that is all. But can this my unbelief in any way modify my judgment of your action? Not in the least. With my whole heart I say, you have acted rightly, and I wish that I could say as much to many people.
I am sorry that you have not produced Lohengrin again; you were in the right swing with it this season. What a pity that only a single performance should have been possible! This shows of what use half a year may be.
That Madame D. and her husband were unable to understand the passage in my preface proves their exceedingly fine tact. This was, no doubt, the best way for them of saving themselves a painful impression, and I am glad that they were able to do this, for it was really and truly far from my mind to annoy them. Ah, I wish I could this summer make at last a beautiful journey, and that I knew how to set about it! To this sigh only my own voice replies as echo from the wall of leather which surrounds me. This longing for a journey is so great in me that it has already inspired me with thoughts of robbery and murder against Rothschild and Co. We sedentary animals scarcely deserve to be called men. How many things we might enjoy if we did not always sacrifice them to that damnable "organ of sitting still."
Alas! this "organ of sitting still" is the real lawgiver of all civilized humanity. We are to sit or at best to stand, never to walk, much less to run for once in a while. My hero is the "bold runner Achilles." I would rather run to death than sit still and get sick. That is your opinion also, is it not? and therefore I may expect you for the Flying, not the lying-down, Dutchman.
We shall see. Live gloriously and well! Wholly thine, Richard Wagner.
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 75