I have several times meant to write to you, and I would rather have done so at any moment than this. It is true I have an hour to spare, but I am altogether so depressed, empty, dull, and prosaic that I do not know how to appear before you with any sort of decent bearing. God made music simply to annoy me. It really strengthens me to go to a lecture now and then, and the actual threshing out of music is nothing but the kind of thing which has been happening to me this week. It is clearly deliberately designed by the Creator to plague me. You know I like Bellini's opera Romeo and Juliet; so far so good, but thereupon my nonsensical management must needs require me to get it rehearsed in five days, because I once unluckily said that it was very easy. I have now achieved the impossible, and between Monday last and yesterday drummed the opera into the heads of two of the most unmusical of women singers, and made a first orchestral rehearsal possible. The consequence is that I am completely out of humour, and my soul wallows in emptiness and inanity. Add to this that I have let all my love-affairs grow cold, that I have played and lost consistently, so that I have no money, and, worst of all, am in the thick of the composition of a symphony about which I have already written to Pohlenz, and which I simply cannot finish. Before God, I know of only one thing to end this misery, and that is if you could come to me at once and could stay a week or so in my fine big apartments. I suppose it cannot be, for there are difficulties involved both here and with you, devil take them! Moreover, I have no right to talk to you like this, for when I compare your letters with mine I am bound to feel very much ashamed. But can there be comparisons between us? You, by the grace of God, fortunate and independent, your feet planted on your own land, possessing everything from the outset which may come to others in the future, and I, well, if my pride, which begins to hold up its head again at this comparison, did not forbid, I should probably make myself out worse than I deserve, for I am just in the mood now to find nothing good about me. I will see how I look to myself tomorrow afternoon. I must go to rehearsal now. Adieu!
This time I really will go on with my letter, although I have lately abandoned many such beginnings. I am in a brighter mood too, so I will write in red ink. I have just had a letter from my mother which says much about you. I am glad that you were there a few times. She thinks you are changed, altered for the better; you live much in Ermlitz; you would like to come to see me, and I need only write you a word. Here, then, I write you a hundred. Do come! Come in about a week, and stay a week in my lodgings, two rooms, of which one has six windows, and go back to Leipzig with me at the end of the month. Do do this! Perhaps then I shall be able to explore that heavenly neighbourhood in your company; it would do me good to spend the last of the fine season sharing reminiscences with you in such a paradise before coming back again to the vile flat north for the Magdeburg Bluthochzeit. I enjoyed the opera yesterday. It went very well and was uncommonly well received.
I am fearfully busy and occupied. Tomorrow we tackle Adlers Horst again. You will come just in time for it. For the moment I am pretty free of any love-affairs. I have no time for them, but I keep up with Toni a little. Ach, du lieber Gott, that is all there is to it. It is true I am indulging in sweet dreams at present, for tomorrow is payday. But, my God, how prosaic it all is! Come to me and warm me up! I thought at first I was disposed to write, but I feel I am not. I am not living at all. I haven't read a newspaper since I have been here. The new English Cabinet can play the most foolish pranks without arousing my ire, but what of it? What is Schlesier doing? I hope you go about with him a lot. Give him greeting from me. How is the French Revolution getting on, and, as a pendant to that, how is your Columbus? And what am I about, that I ask you all these questions? What has it all to do with me? Can I help it that Schlesier exists? Can I do anything for the French Revolution? Can I do anything for your Columbus? "Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee, thou art translated!" Praise be, I have got a little foolishness off my chest, and now I am uncommonly happy and merry! Come and see me, remember me to wife and child, honour your father and mother, and may God give me His blessing. Adieu! I promised Schlesier to write. Show him this letter, so that he can see why I do not write to him, and how bored I am.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 9