My dear friend,
I have to write to you, and am so annoyed about what I have to write to you that I would rather not take pen in hand any more. Hülsen has declined; I enclose his letter. He has no notion of what the matter is about, and it will never be possible to give him a notion of it. This Hülsen is personally a well-disposed man, but without any knowledge of the business under his care. He treats with me about Tannhäuser just as he might with Flotow about Martha. It is too disgusting. I see fully that I have made a great mistake. From the beginning I ought to have made it the first and sole condition that everything concerning the performance of Tannhäuser should be left wholly and entirely to you.
I can explain to myself how it happened that I did not hit upon this simple method. The first news from Berlin about Tannhäuser only frightened me. I had no confidence in anything there, and my instinct advised me to decline the thing altogether. It is true that you occurred to me at once as my only guarantee, but I had first to secure your consent to undertake Tannhäuser in Berlin. In order, as it were, to gain time, I sent to Berlin the demand for 1,000 thalers, so as to keep them going, and at the same time I applied to you, with the urgent, impetuous question whether you would see to this matter. Simultaneously with your answer in the affirmative I received from Berlin the news of the delay and postponement of Tannhäuser till the new year. Being under the impression that my niece would leave Berlin at the beginning of February, I thought the Tannhäuser performance would have to be given up altogether, and instructed my brother to get the score back unless Hülsen could guarantee me ten performances this winter. I thought the matter ended, when I was told in reply that my niece would stay till the end of May and that Hülsen would undertake to announce the opera six times during the first month. Thus the possibility of a performance of Tannhäuser at Berlin, wholly given up by me, was once more restored.
From all the letters of Hülsen and my brother I could in the meantime see perfectly well that these people were without any understanding of what was to me essential and important in this matter; that in all their views they were so totally incapable of leaving the grooves of routine that I should have to fear they would never understand my desire to invite you to Berlin. I confess that I had some anxiety on the point, but at last I wrote to Hülsen myself as clearly, warmly, cordially, and persuasively as was in my power. I at once called his attention to the fact that the hostility of the very insignificant Berlin conductors would be as nothing compared with the favourable influence which you would exercise on every side. In short, I wrote in such a manner that I could not believe in the possibility of an unfavourable answer. Read that answer, and take notice that I have once more met with my usual fate: the fate of calling out to the world with my whole soul and of having my calls echoed by walls of leather.
I am now discussing with myself what I shall do. To give up everything and simply demand my score back would be most agreeable to me. As yet I have not replied with a line to either Hülsen or X. What do you think? Or shall I look on indifferently, amuse myself when I can make a hundred thalers, buy champagne, and turn my back upon the world? It is a misery. I am going from bad to worse every day, and lead an indescribably worthless life. Of real enjoyment of life I know nothing; to me “enjoyment of life, of love,” is a matter of imagination, not of experience. In this manner my heart has to go to my brain, and my life becomes an artificial one; only as an artist can I live; in the artist my whole man has been sunk. If I could visit you in Weimar and see a performance of my operas now and then, I might perhaps still hope to recover. I should there find an element of incitement, of attraction for my artistic being; perhaps a word of love would meet me now and then. But here! Here I must perish in the very shortest space of time, and everything, everything will come too late, too late! So it will be. No news can give me pleasure any more; if I were vain and ambitious, it would be all right; as I am, nothing written can attract me. All this comes too late! What shall I do? Shall I implore the King of Saxony, or perhaps his ministers, for mercy, humble myself, and confess my repentance? Who can expect that of me? You, my only one, the dearest whom I have, you who are to me prince and world, everything together, have mercy on me. But calm! Calm! I must write to you about the Faust overture.
You beautifully spotted the lie when I tried to make myself believe that I had written an overture to Faust. You have felt quite justly what is wanting: the woman is wanting. Perhaps you would at once understand my tone-poem if I called it Faust in Solitude. At that time I intended to write an entire Faust symphony; the first movement, that which is ready, was this solitary Faust, longing, despairing, cursing. The feminine floats around him as an object of his longing, but not in its divine reality, and it is just this insufficient image of his longing which he destroys in his despair. The second movement was to introduce Gretchen, the woman. I had a theme for her, but it was only a theme. The whole remained unfinished. I wrote my Flying Dutchman instead. This is the whole explanation. If now, from a last remnant of weakness and vanity, I hesitate to abandon this Faust work altogether, I shall certainly have to remodel it, but only as regards instrumental modulation. The theme which you desire I cannot introduce; this would naturally involve an entirely new composition, for which I have no inclination. If I publish it, I shall give it its proper title, Faust in Solitude, or The Solitary Faust, a tone-poem for orchestra.
My new poems for the two Siegfrieds I finished last week, but I have still to rewrite the two earlier dramas, Young Siegfried and Siegfried's Death, as very considerable alterations have become necessary. I shall not have finished entirely before the end of the year. The complete title will be The Ring of the Nibelung, a festival stage-play in three days and one previous evening: previous evening, The Rhinegold; first day, The Valkyrie; second day, Young Siegfried; third day, Siegfried's Death. What fate this poem, the poem of my life and of all that I am and feel, will have I cannot as yet determine. So much, however, is certain: that if Germany is not very soon opened to me, and if I am compelled to drag on my artistic existence without nourishment and attraction, my animal instinct of life will soon lead me to abandon art altogether. What I shall do then to support my life I do not know, but I shall not write the music of the Nibelungen, and no person with human feelings can ask me to remain the slave of my art any longer.
Richard Wagner
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 88