Dearest friend,
A thousand thanks for your last letter. Unfortunately, I cannot reply to it as I should like to do; the nerves of my brain are once more in a state of great suffering, and for some time I ought to give up all writing and reading. I might say all mental existence. Even the shortest letter wearies me terribly, and only the most perfect quiet, where and how shall I find it, may restore me. But I do not wish to complain, only to explain to you why today I must limit my communication to stating briefly what is absolutely necessary. Do not be angry with me for not writing with that joyful expansion which is intended to make up for the impossibility of personal intercourse.
As to Berlin, nothing is settled yet. Hulsen considered my demand as a vote of want of confidence in his personal intentions, and this error I had to dispel by laying my most perfect confidence as a weight on his conscience. All I want him to do now is to acknowledge in a few words that he perfectly understands my difficult position with regard to Tannhäuser at Berlin, and that he undertakes the performance with the desire of conquering that difficult position. The whole subject of honoraria I leave to him.
One thing has recently calmed my anxiety: I have written tolerably comprehensive instructions for the performance of Tannhäuser, and have had them printed as a pamphlet and sent a sufficient number of copies to the theatres which had bought the score. I hope this will be of use. I send you herewith half a dozen copies. There will not be much that is new to you in the pamphlet, because I have discussed most things with you by letter; still it might be useful to you, because it will materially assist you in your purpose of restudying Tannhäuser if you will give it to the stage manager and the singers. This, therefore, I would ask you to do.
The work has been a perfect torture to me. This eternal communication by letter and in print is terrible to me, especially when it is about things the significance of which has for a long time lain far behind me. In fact, if I still trouble myself about these earlier operas, it is only from the necessity of circumstances, not from any desire to hark back.
This leads me to Berlioz and Raff. Candidly speaking, I am sorry to hear that Berlioz thinks of recasting his Cellini. If I am not mistaken, this work is more than twelve years old. Has not Berlioz developed in the meantime so that he might do something quite different? It shows poor confidence in himself to have to return to this earlier work. B. has shown quite correctly where the failure of Cellini lies, namely, in the poem and in the unnatural position in which the musician was forcibly placed by being expected to disguise by purely musical intentions a want which the poet alone could have made good. This Cellini Berlioz will never put on its legs. But which of the two after all is of more importance, Cellini or Berlioz? Leave the former alone, and help the second. To me there is something horrible in witnessing this attempt at galvanizing and resuscitating. For heaven's sake let Berlioz write a new opera; it will be his greatest misfortune if he fails to do this, for only one thing can save him, the drama, and one thing must lead him to ever deeper ruin, his obstinate avoidance of this sole refuge. And in this latter he will be confirmed by occupying himself again with an old attempt, in which he has been deserted by the poet, for whose faults he will try once more to make up by his music.
Believe me, I love Berlioz, although he keeps apart from me in his distrust and obstinacy; he does not know me, but I know him. If I have expectations of any one, it is of Berlioz, but not in the direction in which he has arrived at the absurdities of his Faust. If he proceeds further in that direction, he must become perfectly ridiculous. If ever a musician wanted the poet, it is Berlioz, and his misfortune is that he always prepares this poet for himself, according to his musical whim, arbitrarily handling now Shakespeare, now Goethe. He wants a poet who would completely penetrate him, who would conquer him by delight, who would be to him what man is to woman. I see with dismay that this exceedingly gifted artist is perishing in his egotistic solitude. Can I save him?
You do not want to have Wiland. I believe it to be a beautiful poem, but am no longer able to execute it for myself. Will you offer it to Berlioz? Perhaps Henri Blaze would be the man to treat it in French. How about Raff? I thought he was writing a new work, but no; he is remodeling an old one. Is there no life in these people? Out of what can the artist create if he does not create out of life, and how can this life contain an artistically productive essence unless it impels the artist continually to creations which correspond to life? Is this artificial remodeling of old motives of life real artistic creativeness? How about the source of all art unless new things flow forth from it irresistibly, unless it is wholly absorbed in new creations? O ye creatures of God, do not think that this making is artistic creating. It betrays no end of self-complacency, combined with poverty, if we try to prop up these earlier attempts. If Raff's opera, as you tell me, has pleased, he ought to be satisfied; in any case he had a better reward than I had for my Feen, which was never performed at all, or for my Liebesverbot, which had one abominable performance, or for my Rienzi, of the revival of which I think so little that I should not permit it if it were contemplated anywhere. About the Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin I trouble myself with disgust, and only for the reason that I know that, on account of imperfect representations, they have never been perfectly understood. If they had had their due anywhere, I should care devilishly little about things that I have outlived. Good people, do something new, new, and once more new. If you stick to the old, the devil of barrenness holds you in thrall, and you are the most miserable of artists. Well, this is off my heart; he who charges me with insincerity will have to answer Heaven; he who charges me with arrogance is silly. I can write no more; do not be angry; my head is bursting.
Richard Wagner
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 83