Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1

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You will see how quickly I shall turn out things. My preparations
for Paris, the pamphlet, and even two sketches for subjects will
be ready and on their way next month. Where I cannot agree with
you I shall win you over to me; that I promise, so that we may
always go hand in hand and never separate. I will obey you, but
give me my poor wife; arrange it so that she may come cheerfully,
with some confidence, soon and quickly. Alas! this, in the
language of our dear nineteenth century, means, Send her as much
money as you can possibly get. Yes, such is my nature; I can beg,
I could steal, to cheer up my wife, were it only for a little
while. Dear, good Liszt, see what you can do! Help me, help me,
dear Liszt. Farewell, and--help me!

Your grateful

RICHARD WAGNER.

Write straight to my wife: Minna Wagner, Friedrich-strasse No.
20, Dresden.

24.

DEAR FRIEND,

In answer to your letter, I have remitted one hundred thalers to
your wife at Dresden. This sum has been handed to me by an
admirer of "Tannhauser", whom you do not know, and who has
specially asked me not to name him to you.

With Y. B., who paid me a visit yesterday, I talked over your
position at length. I hope his family will take an active
interest in your affairs.

All the scores (excepting the overture to "Faust") I sent to
Zurich last week. The separation from your "Lohengrin" was
difficult to me. The more I enter into its conception and
masterly execution, the higher rises my enthusiasm for this
extraordinary work. Forgive my wretched pusillanimity if I still
have some doubt as to the wholly satisfactory result of the
performance.

Permit me one question: Do you not think it advisable to add to
"Tannhauser" a dedication (post scriptum) to the Lord of
Wartburg, H.R.H. Carl Alexander, Hereditary Grand Duke of Saxe-
Weymar-Eisenach?

If you agree to this, have a very simple plate to that effect
engraved, and send me in advance, together with your next letter,
a few lines to the Hereditary Grand Duke, which I shall hand to
him at once. For the present you must expect no special donation
in return, but the sympathy of the prince for your masterpiece
fully justifies this attention.

Friendly greetings to Alexander Muller, to whom I am still very
grateful for his friendly reception at Zurich. If you should see
J. E., assure him of my sincere interest in his further welfare.
He is an honest, able, excellent man.

Hold me in kind remembrance, even as I am cordially devoted to
you.

F. LISZT

WEYMAR, July 29th, 1849

P.S.--Be careful in your articles in the newspapers to omit all
political allusions to Germany, and leave royal princes alone. In
case there should be an opportunity of paying Weymar a modest
compliment en passant, give free vent to your reminiscences with
the necessary kid gloves.

25.

DEAR LISZT,

I herewith send you my last finished work; it is a new version of
the original article which I sent to Paris last week to have it
translated for the feuilleton of the National. Whether you will
be pleased with it I do not know, but I feel certain that your
nature is at one with me. I hope you will find in it nothing of
the political commonplaces, socialistic balderdash, or personal
animosities, against which you warned me; but that, in the
deepest depth of things, I see what I see, is entirely owing to
the circumstance that my own artistic nature and the sufferings
it has to go through have opened my eyes in such a manner that
death alone can close them again. I look forward either to an
entirely useless existence, or to an activity which responds to
my inmost being, even if I have to exercise it afar from all
external splendour. In the former case I should have to think of
abbreviating that existence.

Please address and send the manuscript, together with the
enclosed letter, to the publisher Otto Wigand in Leipzig. Perhaps
I shall succeed in drawing from my inferior literary faculty some
small support for my existence. Since my last letter, which I
posted at the same time with my stormy petition to you, I have
had no news from my wife, and am slightly tortured accordingly.

From a letter written by Baron Schober to Eck at Zurich, I see
with great pleasure that your prospects are cheerful, and that
you are resolved to settle in Weimar. I presume that the
excellent Princess is also happy and well. Heaven be thanked!
Whether you ought to show her my manuscript I am not quite
certain; in it I am so much of a Greek that I have not been able
quite to convert myself to Christianity. But what nonsense I
talk! As if you were not the right people! Pardon me.

Farewell, dear, unique friend! Remember me in kindness.

Your

RICHARD WAGNER

ZURICH, August 4th, 1849

Have you been good enough to see about the forwarding to me of my
scores and writings? I am anxious at not having seen anything of
them.

26.

DEAREST FRIEND,

A thousand thanks for your letter, and for kindly taking care of
my wife. The unknown donor is wrong in wishing to be hidden from
me. Thank him in my name.

The day before yesterday I sent you a long article; probably you
have read it. I am glad that I can agree to your wish to dedicate
"Tannhauser" to the Grand Duke without the slightest abnegation
of my principles, for I hope you will see that I care for
something else than the stupid political questions of the day.

It would be best if you could have the dedication page and the
special copy done through Meser, in which case you might also, if
necessary, promise to bear the trifling expense, for of that
copyright not a single note is mine. I hope you like the verses.
Will you put the letter to the Grand Duke in an addressed
envelope?

Oh, my friends, if you would only give me the wages of a middling
mechanic, you would have pleasure in my undisturbed work, which
should all be yours.

Thanks for sending the scores. "Lohengrin" will be especially
useful to me, for I hope to pawn the score here for some hundreds
of florins, so as to have money for myself and my wife for the
next few months.

Your doubts as to a satisfactory effect of the performance of the
opera have frequently occurred to me. I think, however, that if
the performance is quite according to my colour, the work--
including even the end--will be all right. One must dare.

Muller and Eck were delighted by your greetings, and return them
with enthusiasm.

Dear, good Liszt, I also thank you most cordially for all the
care you take of me. Consider that I can give you nothing better
in return than the best I can accomplish. Give me perfect peace,
and you shall be satisfied. I hope my wife will be here soon;
then you shall soon have good news of me.

Farewell, and continue to be my friend.

Your

RICHARD WAGNER

ZURICH, August 7th, 1849

27.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

After a silence of several months, I cannot address you without
first of all thanking you once more with all my heart for the
friendly assistance which enabled me to have my poor wife back
again. By this assistance my wife made it possible to preserve
and bring with her some favourite trifles of our former household
and, before all, my grand piano. We are settled here as well as
possible; and after a long interruption, full of pain and unrest,
I am once more able to think of the execution of my great
artistic plans for the future.

After this final reunion with my much-tried wife, nothing could
have given me greater pleasure than to learn about the produce of
your artistic activity. The pieces written by you for the
centenary of Goethe's birth I have now seen in the pianoforte
score, and have occupied myself with them attentively. With all
my heart I bid you welcome, and am glad--especially also in
sympathy with your friend--that you behave so valiantly in this
field of honour, selected by you with glorious consistency. What
I felt most vividly, after my acquaintance with these
compositions, was the desire to know that you were writing an
opera or finishing one already begun. The aphoristic nature of
such tasks as those set you by this Goethe celebration must
involuntarily be transferred to the artistic production, which
therefore cannot attain to perfect warmth. Creative power in
music appears to me like a bell, which the larger it is is the
less able to give forth its full tone, unless an adequate power
has set it in motion. This power is internal, and where it does
not exist internally it does not exist at all. The purely
internal, however, cannot operate unless it is stimulated by
something external, related to it and yet different. Creative
power in music surely requires this stimulus no less than does
any other great artistic power; a great incitement alone can make
it effective. As I have every reason to deem your power great, I
desire for it the corresponding great incitement; for nothing
here can be arbitrarily substituted or added: genuine strength
can only create from necessity. Wherever in the series of your
pieces Goethe himself incites your strength, the bell resounds
with its natural full tone, and the clapper beats in it as the
heart does in the body. If you had been able to ring the whole
"Faust"-bell (I know this was impossible), if the detached pieces
had had reference to a great whole, then that great whole would
have thrown on the single pieces a reflex which is exactly the
certain something that may be gained from the great whole, but
not from the single piece. In single, aphoristic things we never
attain repose; only in a great whole is great power self-
contained, strong, and therefore, in spite of all excitement,
reposeful. Unrest in what we do is a proof that our activity is
not perfectly self-contained, that not our whole power, but only
a detached particle of that power, is in action. This unrest I
have found in your compositions, even as you must have found it
too often in mine without better cause. With this unrest I was,
however, better pleased than if comfortable self-contentment had
been their prominent feature. I compare it to the claw by which I
recognize the lion; but now I call out to you, Show us the
complete lion: in other words, write or finish soon an opera.

Dear friend, look upon me with an earnest but kind glance! All
the ills that have happened to me were the natural and necessary
consequences of the discord of my own being. The power which is
mine is quite unyielding and indivisible. By its nature it takes
violent revenge when I try to turn or divide it by external
force. To be wholly what I can be, and therefore, no doubt,
should be, is only possible for me if I renounce all those
external things which I could gain by dint of the aforesaid
external force. That force would always make me fritter away my
genuine power, would always conjure up the same evils. In all I
do and think I am only artist, nothing but artist. If I am to
throw myself into our modern publicity, I cannot conquer it as an
artist, and God preserve me from dealing with it as a politician.
Poor and without means for bare life, without goods or heritage,
as I am, I should be compelled to think only of acquisition; but
I have learnt nothing but my art, and that I cannot possibly use
for the purpose of acquiring nowadays; I cannot seek publicity,
and my artistic salvation could be brought about one day only by
publicity seeking me. The publicity for which alone I can work is
a small nucleus of individuals who constitute my whole publicity
at present. To these individuals, therefore, I must turn, and put
the question to them whether they love me and my art-work
sufficiently to make it possible for me, as far as in them lies,
to be myself, and to develop my activity without disturbance.
These individuals are not many, and they live far from each
other, but the character of their sympathy is an energetic one.
Dear friend, the question with me is bare life. You have opened
Paris to me, and I most certainly do not refuse it; but what I
have to choose and to design for that place cannot be chosen and
designed in a moment; I must there be some one else and yet
necessarily remain the same. All my numerous sketches are adapted
only to treatment by myself, and in the German language. Subjects
which I should have been prepared to execute for Paris (such as
"Jesus of Nazareth") turn out to be impossible for manifold
reasons when I come to consider closely the practical bearings of
the thing, and I must therefore have time and leisure to wait for
inspiration, which I can expect only from some remote region of
my nature. On the other hand, the poem of my "Siegfried" lies
before me. After not having composed a note for two years, my
whole artistic man is impelled towards writing the music for it.
What I could possibly hope for from a Paris success would not
even be able to keep me alive; for, without being thoroughly
dishonest, I should have to hand it over to my creditors.

The question, then, is, How and whence shall I get enough to
live? Is my finished work "Lohengrin" worth nothing? Is the opera
which I am longing to complete worth nothing? It is true that to
the present generation and to publicity as it is these must
appear as a useless luxury. But how about the few who love these
works? Should not they be allowed to offer to the poor suffering
creator--not a remuneration, but the bare possibility of
continuing to create?

To the tradesmen I cannot apply, nor to the existing nobility--
not to human princes, but to princely men. To work my best, my
inmost salvation, I am not in a position to rely on merit, but on
grace. If we few in this villainous trading age are not gracious
towards each other, how can we live in the name and for the
honour of art?

Dear friend, you, I believe, are the only one on whom I can
implicitly rely. Do not be frightened! I have tried to relieve
you of the burden of this exclusive reliance; I have turned
elsewhere, but in vain. From H. B., about whom you wrote to me, I
have heard nothing, and am glad from my heart that I have not.
Dear Liszt, let us leave the TRADESMEN alone once for all. They
are human and even love art, but only as far as BUSINESS will
allow.

Tell me; advise me! Hitherto my wife and I have kept ourselves
alive by the help of a friend here. By the end of this month of
October our last florins will be gone, and a wide, beautiful
world lies before me, in which I have nothing to eat, nothing to
warm myself with. Think of what you can do for me, dear, princely
man! Let some one buy my "Lohengrin," skin and bones; let some
one commission my "Siegfried." I will do it cheaply! Leaving our
old plan of a confederation of princes out of the question, can
you not find some other individuals who would join together to
help me, if YOU were to ask them in the proper manner? Shall I
put in the newspaper "I have nothing to live on; let him who
loves me give me something"? I cannot do it because of my wife;
she would die of shame. Oh the trouble it is to find a place in
the world for a man like me! If nothing else will answer, you
might perhaps give a concert "for an artist in distress."
Consider everything, dear Liszt, and before all manage to send me
soon some--some money. I want firewood, and a warm overcoat,
because my wife has not brought my old one on account of its
shabbiness. Consider!

From Belloni I soon expect an invitation to Paris, so as to get
my "Tannhauser" overture performed at the Conservatoire, to begin
with. Well, dear friend, give one of your much-occupied days to
the serious and sympathetic consideration of what you might do
for me. Your loving nature, free from all prejudice and only
occupied with the artist in me, will suggest to you a great work
of love which will be my salvation. Believe me, I speak sincerely
and openly; believe me that in you lies my only hope.

Farewell. Receive, together with mine, the most ardent wishes of
my good wife. Remember me, as one cordially devoted to her, to
Princess Wittgenstein, and thank her in my name if she should
think of me now and then.

Farewell, you good man, and let me soon hear from you.

Wholly yours,

RICHARD WAGNER

ZURICH, October 14th, 1849 (Am Zeltwege, in den hinteren
Escherhausern, 182.)

28.

DEAR FRIEND,

For more than a month I have been detained here by the serious
illness of the young Princess M. W. My return to Weymar is in
consequence forcibly postponed for at least another month, and
before returning there it is impossible for me to think of
serving you with any efficiency. You propose to me to find you a
purchaser for "Lohengrin" and "Siegfried." This will certainly
not be an easy matter, for these operas, being essentially--I
might say exclusively--German, can at most be represented in five
or six German towns. You know, moreover, that since the Dresden
affair OFFICIAL Germany is not favourable to your name. Dresden,
Berlin, and Vienna are well-nigh impossible fields for your works
for some time to come. If, as is not unlikely, I go to Berlin for
a few days this winter, I shall try to interest the King in your
genius and your future; perhaps I shall succeed in gaining his
sympathy for you and in managing through that means your return
by way of Berlin, which would certainly be your best chance. But
I need not tell you how delicate such a step is, and how
difficult to lead to a good end. As to the "confederation of
princes" which you mention again in your letter, I must
unfortunately repeat to you that I believe in its realization
about as much as in mythology.

Nevertheless I shall not omit to sound the disposition of H.H.
the Duke of Coburg during the visit I shall probably have the
honour of paying him at the beginning of January. By his superior
intelligence and personal love of music, access to him will be
made easier. But as to the other thirty-eight sovereigns of
Germany (excepting Weymar, Gotha, and Berlin), I confess that I
do not know how I shall manage to instill into them so subtle an
idea as would be the positive encouragement and the active
protection of an artist of your stamp.

As to the dedication of "Tannhauser," the Hereditary Grand Duke,
while graciously receiving your intention, has sent me word that
it would be more convenient to defer the publication for a few
months, so that I have not been in a hurry to make the necessary
arrangements for the engraving of the dedication plate.

Try, my dear friend, to get on as best you can till Christmas. My
purse is completely dry at this moment; and you are aware, no
doubt, that the fortune of the Princess has been for a year
without an administrator, and may be completely confiscated any
day. Towards the end of the year I reckon upon money coming in,
and shall then certainly not fail to let you have some, as far as
my very limited means will go; you know what heavy charges are
weighing upon me. Before thinking of myself I must provide for
the comfortable existence of my mother and my dear children in
Paris, and I can also not avoid paying Belloni a modest salary
for the services he renders me, although he has always shown
himself most nobly disinterested on my behalf. My concert career,
as you know, has been closed for more than two years past, and I
cannot resume it imprudently without serious damage to my present
position and still more to my future.

However, on my way through Hamburg I have yielded to numerous
solicitations to conduct in April a grand "Musical Festival," the
greater part of the receipts of which will be devoted to the
"Pension Fund of Musicians," which I founded about seven years
ago.

Your "Tannhauser" overture will of course figure in the
programme, and perhaps also, if we have sufficient time and
means, the finale of the first or second act,--unless you have
some other pieces to propose. Kindly write on this subject to
your niece, who is engaged for the whole winter at Hamburg, and
ask her to come to our assistance on this occasion. For it is my
firm intention (not AVOWED or DIVULGED, you understand, for there
would be much inconvenience and no advantage in confiding it to
friends or the public) to set aside part of the receipts for you.
Could not you, on your part, arrange some concerts at Zurich, the
proceeds of which would enable you to get through the winter
tolerably? Why should you not undertake this? Your personal
dignity, it seems to me, would not in the least suffer by it.

Yet another thing, another string to your bow. Should you think
it inconvenient to publish a book of vocal compositions,--lieder
or ballads, melodies or lyrical effusions, anything? For a work
of this class signed with your name I can easily find a publisher
and insist upon a decent honorarium, and there is surely nothing
derogatory in continuing in a path which Mozart, Beethoven,
Schubert, and Rossini have not disdained. I quite understand what
you say of my compositions in the "Goethe Album," and only regret
you did not hear my "Tasso" overture, which, I flatter myself,
would not have displeased you. In consequence of the good opinion
which you kindly express of my talent as a composer, I am going
to ask you a favour if the idea meets with your approval. While
recently glancing through the volume of Lord Byron which has
scarcely ever quitted me on my travels, I came again upon the
mystery "Heaven and Earth," and on reading it once more felt
persuaded that one might turn it to good account by preserving
the difference of character between the two women Anah and
Aholibamah and by keeping of course the Deluge as a purely
instrumental piece for the denouement. If in your free moments
you could think of cutting out of this an oratorio of moderate
length, as in Byron, I should be truly obliged to you.

Read over the Mystery, and tell me whether you like my plan. In
the course of the summer my "Sardanapalus" (in Italian) will be
completely finished, and I shall be delighted to undertake
another work at once.

If you reply before the end of November, address Buckeburg, for I
shall not return to Weymar, for the rest of the winter, till the
beginning of December.

Remember me very kindly to Madame Wagner, and in all
circumstances rely upon my devoted friendship and admiration.

F. LISZT

BOCKEBURG, October 28th, 1849

29.

MY DEAR FRIEND LISZT,

God knows, the more I look into my future, the more I feel what I
possess in you. Such as I am and such as you are, I come to
understand better and better what a rare degree of friendship and
kindness you must have towards me to show me the most active
sympathy of all my friends, in spite of many sides of my nature
which cannot possibly be agreeable to you. You resemble in this
the true poet who, with perfect impartiality, takes every
phenomenon of life as it is according to its essence. As regards
your anxiety about me, I can assure you that if you had sent me
some assistance in answer to my last request, I should not have
been more touched than I was in feeling with you your sorrow at
having to confess that for the time being you could not send me
anything. I helped myself as well as I could by applying to my
friends here. If I had not a wife, and a wife who has already
gone with me through such hard times, I should be much less
anxious about the future; but for her sake I frequently sink into
deep dejection. But that dejection does not help me on; and,
thanks to my healthy nature, I always nerve myself to renewed
courage. Having lately expressed my whole view of art in a work
entitled "The Art-work of the Future," I am now free from all
theoretic hankerings, and have got so far as to care about
nothing but doing art-work. I should have liked best to complete
my "Siegfried," but this wish I could realize only in
exceptionally favourable circumstances, namely if I could look
forward to a year free from material care. This is not the case,
and the care for my future makes it my duty altogether to think
more seriously of my appointed tasks than has hitherto been
possible amidst the most conflicting impressions. Listen, dear
friend: the reason why for a long time I could not warm to the
idea of writing an opera for Paris was a certain artistic dislike
of the French language which is peculiar to me. You will not
understand this, being at home in all Europe, while I came into
the world in a specifically Teutonic manner. But this dislike I
have conquered in favour of an important artistic undertaking.
The next question was the poem and a subject, and here I must
confess that it would be absolutely impossible for me simply to
write music to another man's poems, not because I consider this
beneath me, but because I know, and know by experience, that my
music would be bad and meaningless. What operatic subjects I had
in my head would not have done for Paris, and this was the cause
of my hesitation in the whole affair which you had initiated so
well. Since then I have clearly discovered what task I have in
reality to perform in Paris, so as to remain true to myself and
yet keep Paris always in my mind's eye. As to this, dear friend,
we shall perhaps understand each other perfectly, and you will
agree with me when I determine not to become a Frenchman (in
which I should never succeed, and which the French do not want
from a German), but to remain as I am and in my own character to
speak to the French comprehensibly. Well, in this sense the
subject for a poem has quite recently occurred to me, which I
shall immediately work out and communicate to Gustave Vaez; it is
highly original and suitable to all conditions. More I will tell
you as soon as I have finished the scenario. Belloni has asked me
for the scores of my overtures to "Tannhauser" and "Rienzi," the
first for a concert at the Conservatoire; I believe it is to be
performed next January, and at that time I shall go to Paris
myself to conduct the overture, to settle everything with Gustave
Vaez, and to co-operate with him in obtaining a commission for an
opera. One thing more: I cannot allow my "Lohengrin" to lie by
and decay. Latterly I have accustomed myself to the notion of
giving it to the world at first in a foreign language, and I now
take up your own former idea of having it translated into
English, so as to make its production in London possible. I am
not afraid that this opera would not be understood by the
English, and for a slight alteration I should be quite prepared.
As yet, however, I do not know a single person in London. With
the publisher Beal I made acquaintance par distance when he
printed the overture to "Rienzi," but apart from this I have no
connection with London. Could you manage, dear friend, to write
to London and to introduce my undertaking, and could you also let
me know to whom to apply further? From Paris I should then go to
London, in order to settle the matter if possible.

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