[August, 17, 1858.] Farewell ! Farewell, dear love ! I'm leaving tranquilly. Where'er I be, I shall be wholly thine now. Try to keep the Asyl for me auf Wiedersehen ! Auf Wiedersehen ! Dear soul of my soul, farewell — auf Wiedersehen ! — DIARY AUGUST 1858— JANUARY 1859 VENICE {With one entry, April 1859, Lucerne) 58 58 58 DIARY Since my flight from the Asyl 17. August 1858 se Geneva. August 21. The last night in the Asyl I went to bed at 11 o'clock: I was to start at 5 next morning. Before I closed my eyes, it flashed through my soul how I had always sent myself to sleep here by the thought that on this very spot I once should die : thus should I lie when thou approachedst me for the last, last time, clasp'dst my head in thine arms, in open view of all, and with one final kiss receiv'dst my spirit ! That death was my fondest conception, and it had framed itself entirely to the locality of my sleeping-room : the door toward the staircase was closed, thou enter'dst through the curtains of the study; thus didst thou wind thine arm around me ; thus, gazing up to thee, I passed away. — And now ? Even that possibility of dying had been snatched from me ! Cold, as if hunted, I was quitting this house, in which I had been shut with a daemon I no longer could ban save by flight. — Where — where shall I die, then ? Thus I fell asleep. — Out of troubled dreams I was wakened by a wondrous rustling : as I woke I plainly felt a kiss upon my brow : — a shrill sigh succeeded. 'Twas all so lifelike, that up I sprang, and peered around me. All still. I struck a light : it was just before r, at end of the ghosts' watch. Had a spirit stood guard by me in that drear hour? Wert thou awake or sleeping, near that time? — How fared it with thee? — Never an eye could I close thereafter. For long I vainly tossed in bed, till at last I rose, completely dressed myself, shut the last trunk to, and, now pacing up and down, now stretched full length on the divan, uneasily waited for daylight. This time it appeared later than I had been accustomed-to on sleepless nights in the summer past ; shame-flushed the sun crept up behind the mountain. — Then I gazed across once more and long. — O Heaven, not a tear came to me, but it seemed as if every hair on my temples were turning grey ! — I had taken leave ; now everything was cold and set within me. — I went downstairs. There my wife was waiting for me ; she offered me tea. 'Twas an awful, lamentable hour. — She accompanied me. We paced down the garden. It was a magnificent morning : I never turned my head. — At the last farewell my wife broke out in tears and lamentations ; for the first time my eyes stayed dry. Once again I exhorted her to gentleness and nobleness and quest of Christian comfort ; once more the old revengeful vehemence flared up in her. She is incorrigible, — I could not help telling myself, — yet I cannot venge myself on the unhappy woman ; herself she must work out her own sentence. — So I was in terrible, sad and deadly earnest ; but — weep I could not. — So I set forth And lo ! — I won't deny it : it was well with me, I breathed free. — I was faring into solitude : there I am at home ; in that solitude where I may love thee with every breath I draw ! Here I haven't spoken to a soul as yet, save servants. Even Karl Ritter I have written not to call upon me. It does me so much good, not to have to speak. — Thy diary * VENICE DIARY 33 I read ere going to my first sleep since my departure. Thy diary ! Those fair deep imprints of thy being ! — I slept well. Next day I moved into a lodging,* which I have hired by the week. Here I am quiet and undisturbed, collect my thoughts, and wait till the heat is past, to let me go to Italy. I keep the house the whole day long. — Yesterday I wrote to my sister Klare,t whose acquaintance thou madest two years ago: she wanted brotherly explanation from me, as my wife had written and announced herself. I indicated to her what thou hast been and art to me these six years since ; what a heaven thou hadst prepared for me, and with what strifes and sacrifices thou hadst stood by me ; and how that wonder-work of thy high, noble love had then so rudely and so clumsily been mauled. I know she'll understand me — she has the heart of an enthusiast in a somewhat unkempt shell — and I was bound to shed a little light on that side ; but how my soul and bosom heaved as I ventured to delineate thy lofty, noble purity with tender touch ! — Of a surety, we shall forget and forgive all, all, and nothing but elation will remain ; the consciousness that here a miracle has happened, the like whereof Dame Nature weaves but once in centuries, perhaps never so nobly before. Away with grief ! We are the happiest ; with whom would we exchange? — August 23. S in the morning. In a dream I saw thee on the terrace, dressed as a man, with a travelling-cap upon thy head. Thou peer'dst toward the direction in which I had departed ; but I drew near from the contrary : thus thy gaze was ever turned from me, and I sought in vain to signal my approach, until I softly cried : Mathilde ! then louder and still louder, till my bedroom echoed with the sound, and my own cries awakened me. — Then, when I had relapsed a little into slumber, I dreamed I was reading letters of thine, wherein thou confess'dst to me a youthful love-affair ; thou hadst renounced thy lover, yet kept'st singing his praises, so that I appeared in the light of a mere would-be consoler, — which somewhat galled me. I would not let that dream proceed, and arose to write these lines. — The whole day I had had vehement longing, and a grievous impatience of life had mastered me once more. — August 24. Yesterday I felt utterly wretched : Why go on living ; why live ? Is it cowardice — or courage ? Why that immeasurable happiness, to be so boundlessly unhappy? The night brought sound sleep. — To-day has gone better. — I have had a beautiful portfolio made here, expressly to lock away thy keepsakes and letters : it will hold a great quantity, and what once gets in, will not be given out again to naughty children. Therefore take good care what thou send'st me in future : not a jot thereof wilt thou have back — until after my death ; unless thou wouldst fain commit it to the grave with me. — To-morrow I go direct to Venice. I am dying to get there, where I think of settling calmly down, tho' the journey in itself is most distasteful to me. — It is a week to-day since I saw thy terrace for the last time ! — Venice, the 3rd of September. Yesterday I wrote thee and our lady friend,* so long had I been withheld by the journey and my accommodation here. Now the diary shall be kept right methodically. — VENICE DIARY 35 My route lay over the Simplon ; the mountains, particularly the long valley of Wallis [Vaiais], weighed me down. One lovely hour I spent on the garden-terrace of the Isola bella; a wondrous sunny morning; I knew this spot,* and dismissed the gardener at once, to be alone there. A beautiful sense of calm and uplifting came over me — so beautiful, that it could not last. Yet what raised me up, what was with and in myself, that lasted : the happiness of being loved by thee! At Milan merely a night's halt ; on August 29 arrived in Venice after noon. On the way down the Grand Canal to the Piazetta, melancholy impressions and graveness of mood ; grandeur, beauty and decay, in close array : yet comfort in the reflection that here no modernity flourished, and in consequence no bustling triviality. S. Mark's Square of magical effect. A wholly distant, outlived world, it admirably fits the wish for solitude : nothing to strike one as directly real life ; everything objective, like a work of art. I will remain here, — and accordingly I shall. — Next day, after long debate, apartments taken on the Grand Canal in a mighty palace where I am quite alone for the present; wide, lofty spaces, wherein I can wander at will. Since the question of Abode is so important to me, as the housing for my labourmechanism, I'm devoting all possible care to arranging it after my wish. I wrote for the Erard at once ; it ought to sound wonderful in my vast, high palace-salon. The peculiarly intense stillness of the Canal suits me splendidly. Not till 5 in the afternoon do I leave my abode, to dine; then promenade towards the public garden ; brief halt in the square of S. Mark, which gives a thoroughly theatrical suggestion through its absolute uniqueness and its sea of utter strangers void of all concern to me, merely distracting 36 WAGNER TO MATHIL&E WESENDONCK one's fancy. Toward 9 return home in a gondola ; find the lamp lit, and read a little till bedtime. — Thus will my life flow outwardly on, and thus would I have it. Unfortunately, my stay here is already known ; but I have given orders, once for all, to admit nobody. — This solitude, possible wellnigh here alone to me — and so agreeably possible — caresses myself and my hopes. — Eh ! I hope, for thy sake to get well ! To save thee to me, means to save me to my art. With it — to live for thy consolement ; that is my mission, that fits with my nature, my fate, my will, — my love. Thus am I thine ; thus, too, shalt thou get well through me ! Here will the Tristan be completed — a defiance to all the raging of the world. And with that, an I may, shall I return to see thee, comfort thee, to make thee happy ; there looms my fairest, my most sacred wish, So be it ! Sir Tristan, Lady Isolde ! help me, help my angel ! Here shall your wounds cease bleeding, here shall they heal and close. From here shall the world once learn the sublime and noble stress of highest love, the plaints of agonising joy. And august as a god, serene and hale, shalt thou then behold me back, thy lowly friend ! September 5. This night I have been sleepless, long my vigil ; my sweet child does not tell me how it fares with her? — Marvellously beautiful, the Canal by night ; bright stars, last quarter of the moon. A gondola glides by ; from the distance the chant of gondoliers calling to each other. This last is extraordinarily beautiful, sublime : Tasso's stanzas are recited to it no more, they say, but the melodies are in any case of hoary eld, as old as Venice ; certainly older than Tasso's stanzas, which must simply have been fitted to them after. Thus the everlasting has preserved itself VENICE DIARY 37 in the melody, whereas the stanzas were but taken thereinto as a passing phenomenon, at last to be engulfed* These profoundly melancholy ditties, sung with full ringing voice, borne across the water from afar, and dying into still remoter distance, have sublimely moved me. Glorious ! — September 6. Yesterday I saw Ristori as Maria Stuart. I had seen her first a few days since as Medea, in which she pleased me much, nay — made a fairly deep impression on me. Uncommon virtuosity, and in the play of emotions a certainty of gesture never known to me before in such perfection ; but what I missed from the first — and as for that, is necessarily foreign to Medea — I plainly recognised now as the chief defect in her art, since it is imperatively demanded of Maria Stuart. Here ideality, enthusiasm, deep, rapturous warmth, are needed. It was humiliating, how painfully the artist fell short here ; and with no little pride I felt the height and the significance of German art, when I remembered how enkindlingly, ay, transportingly I had seen this very task fulfilled by many a German actress ; f whereas the Ristori, with her abrupt leaps from sophisticated prose to almost animally plastic passion, shewed that she had not even remotely guessed the nature of her task, to say nothing of being born to it. It was truly deplorable and exasperating. This strain of ideality in German art, however, is that which makes my music possible, and by means thereof my poetry. How distant, on the other hand, are these French-Italian evolutions from all I can ever conceive ; and yet the ideal element casts 3 8 WAGNER TO MATHILDE WESENDONCK an unconscious spell over Italians and French themselves, when it comes upon them from without, so that I cannot let it merely rank as a sort of specifically German onesidedness of character. I myself have experienced this in the effect on individuals of my performances. — In what, then, consists the difference between the ideality I mean and that realistic comedy of passion? Glance through the scene in the third act of Maria Stuart, in the garden where she welcomes freedom, and imagine that Ristori left out the greater part here, nay, almost all that did not lead up to a point of hatred against Elisabeth, and thus afford an opening for development of her rapid changes of impassioned byplay. — Yet, that will not make it quite clear to thee, but thou'lt know what I mean in an instant, if I remind thee of our love September 7. To-day I had a note from Frau Wille ; it was the first tidings I had had of thee. Thy mind is made up, she says, calmly and resolutely to go through with the renunciation : parents, children — duties. — Oh but how foreign it sounded to me, in my solemn cheerfulness ! — Thinking of thee, never have parents, children, duties, come into my mind : I simply knew that thou lov'dst me, and that everything sublime must be unhappy in the world. From this height it startles me to see a written catalogue of what makes us unhappy. Then of a sudden I see thee in thy gorgeous house, see all that, hear all those to whom we must ever remain unintelligible ; those who, strangers, yet are — near us, all anxiety to keep the Near afar from us ; and anger takes me at the thought : To these, who know naught of thee, comprehend naught of thee, but want everything from thee, thou'rt to sacrifice all ! — I cannot, will VENICE DIARY 39 not see or hear it, if I'm to finish worthily my earthly work ! Only from the inmost depth can I gain the strength ; but — everything from without, that would usurp my resolutions, stirs bitterness up in me. — Thou hopest to see me for a few hours in Rome this winter ? I fear — I cannot see thee ! To see thee, — and then depart from thee for the delectation of another, — can I do that now already ? Surely not ! — And no letters, wouldst thou ? — I have written thee* and sincerely hope not to be rejected with that letter ; — ay, I am sure of thine answer ! — Away with these foolish thoughts ! — I hope. — Sept. 8. " O blinde Augen ! Blode Herzen!" [Tristan, i.-Tr.] Sept. 10. Yesterday I was downright ill, with fever. In the evening, too, I received another letter from Frau Wille : — enclosed was my note to thee — sent back unopened ! — Nay, that should not have happened !— Not that !— To-day I have nothing for the diary as yet; no thoughts,— merely feelings. Those must first come to clearness. — That thou art recruiting thy health, and feeling strong, is my consolation. I have yet another, that almost looks like a revenge : — Some day thou'lt read this rejected letter also,! — and realise what an appalling injustice has been done me with its rejection ! — But much the same has occurred to me quite often before. — 4-0 WAGNER TO MATHILDE WESENDONCK Sept. n. Ha ! — a direct address from thee ! Three words — nothing more ! Yet mere go-betweens, were they the most intelligent and sympathetic, can make up for nothing. How hard it is for two to understand each other fully, how necessary, even for that communion, that they should be in a happily like mood, such as nothing but the fullest feeling of the loved one's actual presence can really bring to pass ; but a third person stands ever apart. Who could efface himself and his particular standpoint so entirely, as only to be a channel for two others? That Frau Wille, purely for her own part, cannot prevail on herself to convey to thee letters from me, I can but deem intelligible : of course there can be no regard paid to their contents there, no consideration how quieting, therefore how needful such communications are ; — enough, they're letters, and she feels, perhaps must feel, compunction in delivering them. As for that, whatever can the "lady friend" advise in general, save what her attitude toward all concerned makes possible to her, and possible in the best and noblest sense ? — But — she also acted according to thy wish ! What ! — a case of conscience between us two? Enough for to-day ! — Peace ! Peace ! — September 13. I felt so sad, that I meant to confide nothing even to the diary: then thy letter came to-day — the letter to Frau Wille. — That thou lov'st me, I knew full well, and thou art good as ever, profound and wise ; so I had to smile, almost to rejoice at my late vexation, since thou prepar'st me here so excellent a satisfaction. I understand thee — even where I think thee a shade in the wrong, — for everything* is a wrong to me, that savours of defence against im- VENICE DIARY 4 1 portunacy. By that terrible departure from Zurich I should have thought I had given final proof that I can — withdraw ; consequently I have a right to resent any doubt of my resignative nicety as an unmerited and deep affront. — Yet to what purpose that now?— My beautiful exaltation has been cast down ; it needs an effort, to mount again : forgive me if I still am tottering ! — I'll be cheerful again — so far as I can ; to Frau Wille, too, I'll write ere long ; but even with letters to her I'll be moderate. God ! every single thing is so hard, and yet the highest can only be attained through moderation. — Yes ! 'tis well, and all will turn out well. Our love stands high above all obstacles, and every hindrance makes us richer, more spiritual, nobler, and ever more intent upon the substance and essence of our love, ever more indifferent toward the inessential. Yes, good, pure darling ! we shall triumph, — we are already in the midst of victory. — September 16. Behold me well and cheerful. Thy letter rejoices me yet. How apt, how sweet and beautiful, is everything that springs from thee ! — Our personal fate seems to me almost a matter of indifference now, everything within is so pure, so altogether fitted to our nature alike and necessity. With that harmonious feeling I wish to return to my work, and am waiting for the piano. The Tristan will cost much still ; but once it is quite ended, meseems a vastly important period of my life will have then been rounded off, and I shall look with new senses, calmly, clearly and with deep consciousness into the world, and through the world up to thee. For that it also is, I now feel so much drawn to work. — Meanwhile I have all manner of dreadful and tedious eorrespondence, that takes away my time; yet ever thou quicken'st me in midst thereof, and Venice gloriously assists thee to cheer me up. For the first time I breathe this pure, delicious, ever even air ; the magic of the place enfolds me in a tender melancholy charm, which never ceases to exert its beneficial power. Of an evening, when I take a gondola trip to the Lido, it vibrates round me like one of those mellow long-drawn fiddle-notes I love so, and to which I once compared thee. Judge thence how I feel, in the moonbeams there on the sea ! — September 18. A year gone by to-day I finished the poem of Tristan and brought thee its last act, thou led'st me to the chair before the sofa, placedst thy arm around me and saidst : "I no more have a wish ! " — On this day, at this hour, was I born anew. — To then was my before-life : from then began my after-life : in that wondrous instant alone did I live. Thou know'st how I spent it ? In no tumult of intoxication ; but solemnly, profoundly penetrated by a soothing warmth, free as if looking on eternity. — I had been painfully, but more and more definitely detaching myself from the world ; all had turned to negation in me, to warding off. Painful was even my artistry ; for it was a longing, an unstilled longing, to find for that negation, that warding off — the positive, affirmative, self-wedding-to-me. That instant gave it me, with so infallible a certitude that a hallowed standstill came o'er me. A gracious woman, shy and diffident, had taken heart to cast herself into a sea of griefs and sorrows, to shape for me that precious instant when she said : I love thee ! — Thus didst thou vow thyself to death, to give me life ; thus did I receive thy life, thenceforward from the world to part with thee, to suffer with thee, die with thee. — At once the spell of longing was dissolved ! — And this one thing thou knowest too, that VENICE DIARY 43 ne'er since have I been at variance with myself. Perplexity and pang might come to us ; even thyself might'st be swept by an eddy of passion: — but I — thou know'st! — remained ever the same ; never, by never so awful a moment, could my love to thee be reft of its fragrance, were it but of one minutest film. All bitterness had vanished from me ; I might mistake, feel pained or tortured, but ever it stayed clear as day to me that thy love was my highest possession, and without it my existence must be a contradiction of itself.— Thanks to thee, thou gracious, loving angel ! — September 23. The drinking-vessel [see p. 88] and cup have arrived ; once again the first friendly token from without. What am I saying ? " von Aussen " ? How can anything come from without to me, that comes from thee ? And yet, — it comes from out the distance ; from that distance where my nearest now is. A thousand thanks, thou dear inventive soul ! Thus mute, how plainly can we tell each other what is so inexpressible ! — September 26. I can't even get to my diary now, such an odious mass of business letters I have to attend to. How foolish I am, though ! This constant vulgar care for life, — and at bottom so deep a disgust with it ; a life I always have to dress up artificially, not to see it constantly before me in its natural offensiveness ! If people only knew what lies between me and a final possibility of rest for work ! — Yet I'll hold on, since I must; I do not belong to myself, and my griefs and troubles are the means to an end that scoffs at all these sufferings. Tut, tut !— no shirking !— September 29. The waning moon now rises late : at its full it furnished me finecomfort through agreeable sensations which I needed. After sunset I regularly took a gondola to meet it, toward the Lido, for the battle twixt day and night was always an entrancing vision in this limpid sky: to the right, amid the dusk-rose aether, gleamed kindly bright the evening star; the moon in full splendour cast its flashing net towards me in the sea. Then when I turned my back upon it for the journey home, my gaze — athwart toward where thou dwellest, and whence thou look'dst towards the moon — would meet the comet, stern and brilliant with its tail of waxing light, close above my affinity the Wagoner. For me it had no terrors, just as nothing can inspire me any more with fear, because I absolutely have no hope, no future more ; rather, I could but smile quite earnestly at people's awe of such a visitant, and chose it with a certain insolent pride for my star. I could see nothing in it but the unaccustomed, dazzling, marvellous. Am I such a comet myself? Have I brought misfortune ? — Was it my fault ? — I could not lose it from my ken again. Silent and at peace I reached the gaily-lighted, ever-lively Piazzetta. Then down we go the melancholy grave Canal : to left and right stand lordly palaces : without a sound : only the gentle gliding of the gondola, the plashing of the oar, broad shadows from the moon. At my dumb palace steps I disembark : wide halls and spaces, now inhabited by me alone. The lamp is burning ; I pick up a book, read little, ponder much. All's still. — Music there, on the canal ! An illuminated gondola with singers and musicians : more and still more boats with listeners follow in its wake: the flotilla spans the breadth of the canal, gliding all but moveless past. Fine voices, passable instruments, render songs. All is ear. — Then, scarcely perceptibly it curves round the bend, VENICE DIARY 45 and vanishes still more imperceptibly. For long I still can hear the tones, ennobled and transfigured by the midnight stillness, tones that as art could hardly captivate me, but had here become part of nature. At last all ceases: the last sound as it dissolves into the moonlight, which softly goes on shining as a visual remainder of the sound-world — Now the moon has waned. — I have not been well these last few days : I have had to give up my evening cruise. Nothing remains but my loneliness, and my futureless existence ! — On the table before me lies a little picture. It is the portrait of my father,* which I no longer could shew thee when it arrived ; a noble, gentle, sufferingly pensive face that infinitely moves me. It has become very dear to me. — Whoever enters, would probably suspect at first the picture of a lady-love. Nay ! Of her I have no picture, but her soul I carry in my heart; there let him peep who can ! — Good-night ! — September 30. To-day I have gone through much. I heard of my beloved's care for me, and quite a beautiful letter lay by.f I have answered as well as I could, sadly and gladly, just as I felt! — Once more I have experienced a thorough horror of youthful marriages ; J except with persons of absolutely no t See letter of same date to Frau Wille, printed below. % Comparing this sentence with the said letter to Frau Wille, I take the preceding dots to represent some allusion to Karl Ritter, whose marriage, contracted four years previously, had by no means proved a happy one. — Tr. importance, I have not yet encountered one the radical mistake whereof has not shewn forth in time. What misery, then ! Soul, character, parts — all must warp, unless exceptional, and then of course most sorrowful new relations supervene. Thus all around me is quite doleful ; what has any manner of significance, helpless and suffering : and only the insignificant can thoroughly enjoy existence. Yet what recks Nature of it all ? She goes her blind way, intent on nothing but the race : i.e. to live anew and anew, commence ever again; spread, spread — utmost spread; the individual, on whom she loads all burdens of existence, is naught to her but a grain of sand in this spread of the species ; a grain she can replace at any moment, if she only gives an extra twist to the race, a thousand- and a millionfold ! Oh, I can't stand hearing anyone appeal to Nature : with finer minds 'tis finely meant, but for that very reason something else is meant thereby; for Nature is heartless and devoid of feeling, and every egoist, ay, every monster, can appeal to her example with more cause and warranty than the man of feeling. — What, then, is such a marriage,, which we contract for life in giddy youth at the first stir of the sexual impulse ? And how seldom are parents made prudent by their own experience ; when they themselves at last have steered out of misery and into ease, they forget all about it, and heedlessly allow their children to plunge along the selfsame track ! — Yet it is just like everything in Nature : for the individual she holds misery, death and despair, in readiness, and leaves him to lift himself above them by his highest effort of resignation : — she cannot prevent that succeeding, but looks on in amazement, and says perhaps : " Is that what I really willed ? " — I'm not quite well yet, but have great hopes of to-night if it brings me calm sleep. Thou wilt not grudge me that ? — Good-night ! — VENICE DIARY 47 October 1. The other day, in the street, my eye chanced to light on a poulterer's stall ; unconsciously I was looking at the heaped-up wares, all neatly and appetisingly dressed, when, as a man at one side was busy plucking a fowl, another thrust his hand into a cage, dragged out a live hen, and tore off its head. The bird's horrible shriek, its pitiful clucking while being overcome, sent a shudder through my soul. — Often as I had experienced the impression before, I haven't got rid of it since. — It is ghastly, the bottomless abyss of inhumanest misery on which our existence, for the most part bent on pleasure, is really poised ! This has always been so manifest to me, and with increasing sensibility has become so stamped upon my mind, that I recognise the rightful cause of all my sorrows as strictly residing in my inability to give up life and strife as yet for good. The consequences thereof are bound to shew in everything ; and my often unaccountably changeful behaviour, my not infrequent acrimony toward my dearest, is to be explained by this conflict alone. Where I observe decided ease, or marked tendency to procure it, I turn aside with a certain inward horror. So soon as an existence appears to me painless, and carefully planned for avoidance of pain, I am capable of dogging it with implacable bitterness, because I account it so far removed from the right solution of man's task. Thus, with no feeling of envy, I have felt an instinctive dislike of the rich : I admit that, despite their possessions, even they are not to be called happy ; but they have a very pronounced aspiration to be so, and that so alienates me from them. With studied aim they hold at arm's-length whatever might bewray to their dormant fellow-feeling that misery whereon all their wished-for ease is based ; and that alone divides me from them by a whole world. I have searched my heart and found that I am drawn with sympathetic urgency towards that other side, and nothing seriously touches me save in so far as it awakes my fellow-feeling — that is : fellow-suffering. This compassion I recognise as the strongest feature in my moral being, and presumably it also is the wellspring of my art. What characterises compassion, however, is that its accesses are not determined by thesuffering object's individual qualities, but just simply by the witnessed suffering itself. With love 'tis otherwise : in it we ascend to communion of joy ["Mit-Freude"], and we can share an individual's joy only when his or her particular qualities are in the highest degree agreeable and homogeneous to us. Among ordinary personalities this is far more lightly possible, because purely sexual regards are almost exclusively at work here ; but the nobler the nature, the more difficult this integration to communion of joy, and should it succeed, behold the highest height ! — On the contrary, compassion can bestow itself on the commonest and meanest creature, a creature which apart from its suffering has absolutely nothing sympathetic to us, ay, is positively antipathetic to us in what it is able to enjoy. The cause hereof in any case is infinitely deep, and if we espy it, we see ourselves thereby raised above all stricter barriers of personality ; for in this exercise of our compassion we encounter Suffering itself, irrespective of personality. To deaden oneself to the promptings of pity, one generally argues that lower natures have been proved, you know, to feel pain itself far more slightly than is the case with higher organisms ; that pain increases in reality in direct ratio to the degree of heightened sensibility which enables one to pity : therefore that compassion bestowed on lower natures is a squandering, exaggerating, ay, a cockering of our emotions. — But this opinion reposes on the fundamental error from which all realistic readings of the world proceed ; and it is precisely here that idealism shews itself in its true moral import, since VENICE DIARY 49 it lays that bare to us as egoistic hebetude. Here it is not a question of what the other suffers, but of what / suffer when I know it to be suffering. Indeed we know all that exists outside us only in so far as we figure it to ourselves, and as I figure it, so it is to me: if I ennoble it, it is noble because I am ; if I feel its pain to be profound, so it is, because I feel profoundly when figuring its pain, — and whoever, on the contrary, may figure it as small, merely shews thereby that he is small himself. Thus my compassion makes the other's suffering a verity, and the smaller the being with which I am able to suffer, the more extensive and encompassing is the field of my emotion in general. — Herein resides that attribute of mine which to others may appear a weakness, and I grant that one-sided dealing is much impeded thereby, though I am certain that when I do deal, I deal conformably to my nature, and at any rate never inflict pain on anyone intentionally. For all my future dealings, however, I shall be guided by this consideration alone : to occasion others as little pain as possible. In that way I shall find myself entirely at one with myself, and only so can I also hope to give others joy ; for there is no true, sterling joy, save of agreement in compassion. That, however, I cannot compel : it must be brought me by my friend's own nature of itself, and therefore — have I only once been fronted with it whole and full ! — But another thing has also grown clear to me : why I can feel even more compassion for lower natures, than for higher. The higher nature is what it is for very reason that its own suffering uplifts it to the height of resignation, or that it has the germs of that uplifting in it, and tends them ; it stands directly near to me, is my equal, and with it I attain to communion of joy. Wherefore I feel less compassion for men, at bottom, than for beasts. To these I see the capability of elevation above pain, of resignation and its deep, divine tranquillity entirely denied ; so that when they fall on suffering — for instance when they're tortured — I see with torturing despair myself just simply absolute suffering, void of redemption, without any higher purpose, and with death alone for liberation ; a liberation which goes to prove that it would have been better had they never arrived at existence at all. Wherefore if there be any purpose at all in this suffering, it can only be the wakening of pity in Man ; who thereby takes the animal's failed existence up into himself, and becomes redeemer of the world inasmuch as he recognises the error of existence in general. (This meaning will become clear to thee some day from the third act of Parzival, Good Friday morning.) Now, to see this capacity for world-redemption through pity innate in a man, but undeveloped, and rotting through studious neglect, makes just that man repellent to me, and weakens my compassion for him to the point of complete insensibility towards his want. In his want he has the very road to redemption which is closed to the beast ; if he does not recognise it, but absolutely wills to keep it blocked to him, I on the contrary feel urged to throw that door wide open to him, and can go the length of cruelty, to bring the want of suffering to his consciousness. Nothing leaves me colder than the philistine's howl over a disturbance of his ease : here any compassion would be complicity; just as it is a property of my whole nature to rouse people out of vulgarity, I am driven also here to naught but goading, to give them to feel of the great sorrow of life ! — Now with thee, child, I also have no compassion more. Thy journal which at last thou gav'st me,* thy latest letters, shew me thee so high, so true, so clarified and glorified by sorrow, so mistress of thyself and the world, that I now can feel but communion-of-joy, but reverence, worship. Thou VENICE DIARY 5 1 beholdest thy pain no longer, but the pain of all the world ; thou canst not so much as figure it to thyself in any other form than of the suffering of the world at large ; in the noblest sense, thou hast become a poet. — But terrible compassion I had for thee then, when thou thrust'st me from thee ; when, no longer a victim to pain but to passion, thou deem'dst thyself betrayed, believ'dst the noblest in thee misconstrued ; then wast thou to me as an angel abandoned by God. And just as that thy state soon freed me from my own bewilderment, it made me inventive to convey thee balm and healing ; I found the lady-friend * to bring thee solace and uplifting, relief and reconciliation. See, it was pity did that ! Of a truth, I could forget myself for that sake, will to renounce for aye the bliss of seeing thee, of being near thee, if but I knew thee calmed, enlightened, given back to thine own self. So contemn not my pity where thou seest me exert it, since I have nothing left to bestow on thyself save communion of joy ! Oh, that is the sublimest ; it can only appear where sympathy is at its full. From the commoner nature to which I gave pity I must swiftly turn away so soon as it demands of me community of joy ; that was the cause of the last embroilment with my wife. The unhappy woman had understood in her way my resolve not to set foot in your house any more, and read it as a rupture with thee ; so she thought that ease and intimacy were bound to be established between us on her return. How fearfully I had to undeceive her ! But — quiet ! quiet ! Another world will rise for us ; be thou blest therein, thrice welcomed to eternal unity of joy ! — October 3. What a hard life I have of it, to be sure ! When I think of the vast expenditure of care, worry and pain I need, merely to procure myself a little leisure from time to time, I'm inclined to be ashamed of going on imposing myself in this way on existence, since the world, speaking strictly, will really have nothing to do with me. Thus for ever and ever to be fighting for provision of the needful, often obliged for whole long periods to think of absolutely nothing but how to set about obtaining outward quiet and the requisites of existence for a little time ahead ; and for that to have so entirely to depart from my own way of feeling, to appear tq those through whom I want myself maintained so altogether different from what I am, — it truly is revolting. And added to it all, to be framed the very way to recognise it as none other. All these cares come so naturally to a man who views life as an end in itself, who finds in concern for provision of the needful the best of sauces for his imaginary enjoyment of the finally procured. For which reason, also, no one else can quite understand why this is so absolutely repugnant to a man like me, seeing that it is the lot and condition of all men ; that for once in a way a man should just not view life as an end in itself, but as an unavoidable means to a higher end — who will comprehend that right earnestly and clearly ? — There must be something peculiar about me, that I should have put up with all this so long already, and moreover should still go on doing so. — The hideous part of it is the growing more and more aware that really not one human creature — certainly, no male— is quite sincerely and seriously interested in me ; with Schopenhauer, I begin to doubt the possibility of any genuine friendship, to rank as utter fable what is dubbed so. People have no idea how little such a friend is actually able to place himself in the other's position, to say nothing of his mode of thought. But that, too, is quite explainable : by the nature of things, this superlative friendship can be nothing but an ideal ; whereas Nature, that hoary old sinner and egoist, with the best of will— if she could VENICE DlARV 53 possibly have it— can do no else than deem herself the whole exclusive world in every individual, and merely acknowledge the other individual so far as it flatters this illusion of Self. — Tis so, and yet, one holds on ! God, what a worth it must have, the thing for whose sake one holds on, with such a knowledge! — October 5. A while ago the Countess A. announced a " little figure " that would soon arrive for me ; I didn't understand her, and meantime finished reading Koppen's History of the Religion of Buddha. An unedifying book : instead of sterling features from the oldest legends, which I expected, for the most part a mere account of development in girth, which naturally turns out more and more repellent, the purer and sublimer is the core. After being so thoroughly disgusted by a detailed description of the ritual at last established, with its relics and preposterous simulacra of the Buddha, the "little figure" arrives, and proves to be a Chinese specimen of one of these sacred effigies. My abhorrence was great, and I could not conceal it from the lady, who fancied she had hit the very thing. One has much trouble in this distortion-loving world to hold one's own against suchlike impressions, and keep unwarped the pure-beheld ideal, everybody is so fond of representing the noblest, if he cannot reach up to it, as akin to himself, i.e. a parody. Nevertheless, in spite of the Chinese caricature, I have succeeded in keeping pure to myself the son of Qakya, the Buddha. Yet I did find in that history one new, or hitherto unheeded feature that was very welcome to me, and probably will lead to an important point. It is this : — CakyaMuni at first was quite against the admission of women into the community of the elect ; he repeatedly expresses 54 NJ7AGNER TO MATHILDE WESENDONCK the view that women are far too subjected by Nature to the sexual function, and consequently to caprice, waywardness, and attachment to personal existence, ever to attain that concentration and breadth of contemplation whereby the unit cuts itself loose from the Natural drift, to arrive at redemption. Now, it was his favourite pupil, Ananda — the same to whom I had already assigned his r61e in my " Sieger " * — , who finally induced the master to depart from his severity and allow women also to be received into the flock. — In that I have an uncommonly weighty gain ; without the least forcing, my plot acquires a great and powerful expansion. The difficulty here, was to adapt this entirelyliberated mortal upraised above all passion, the Buddha himself, for dramatic, and particularly for musical treatment. It is solved at once by his attaining himself one final step in evolution through acceptance of a new cognition ; which is here conveyed to him — as all cognition — through no abstract combination of ideas, but through intuitive emotional-experience, namely by way of a shock to his inner man, and therefore displays him in one final advance to consummate perfection. Ananda, standing nearer to life as yet, and directly affected by the young Tschandala maiden's impetuous love, becomes the medium of this last perfecting. — Ananda, deeply stirred, can reciprocate that love in none save his, the highest sense, as desire to draw the loved one up to him, to let her also share the last salvation. Herein the master crosses him, not harshly, but deploring an error, an impossibility ; finally, however, as Ananda in profoundest sorrow believes he must give up hope, f akya — attracted by his compassion, and as it were by a last fresh problem solution whereof has still detained him in existence — feels moved to examine the girl. In her deepest VENICE DIARY 55 distress, of herself she comes to implore the master to wed her to Ananda. He recites the conditions, renunciation of the world, discardal of all the bonds of Nature. At the final decree she is frank enough to lose all command of herself; whereon there ensues (perhaps thou recall'st it?) the opulent scene with the Brahmins who cast in his teeth, as proof of the perverseness of his teaching, his intercourse with such a girl. While denouncing every kind of human pride, his growing interest in the maiden, whose prior existences he reveals to herself and his opponents, reaches such a pitch, that, when she — recognising in her own sufferings the vast concatenation of the sufferings of the world— declares herself ready to take any vow, he admits her among the saints as if for his apotheosis, thus regarding his world-career for the redeeming of all beings as finished, since he has been able — directly — to accord redemption to Woman also. — Happy Sawitri ! thou now durst follow thy beloved everywhere, be ever near him, with him. Happy Ananda! she is nigh thee now, won never to be lost ! — My child, surely the glorious Buddha was right when he sternly prohibited art. Who can feel more distinctly than I, that it is this abominable art which forever gives me back to the torment of life and all the contradictions of existence? Were this strange gift not within me, this strong predominance of plastic phantasy, clear insight might make me obey my heart's dictate, and — turn into a saint; and as saint I durst bid thee, Come, quit all that holds thee, tear down the bonds of nature : at that price do I point thee out the open road to healing ! — Then were we free : Ananda and Sawitri ! — But so it is not now, for see ! even this, this knowledge, this plain insight — , it makes me ever and again but poet, artist. At the instant I attain to it, it stands before me as an image, with the most lifelike, soul-filled visuality, but — an image that enraptures me. Perforce I must regard it ever closer, ever more intimately, to see into it still more definitely and deeply, sketch it, execute it, breathe life into it as my own creation. For that I need mood, elation, leisure, a comfortable sense of having overcome the common, sordid needs of life ; and all this I have to wrest from just this crabbed, refractory, at all points hostile life, at which I can only get in its own, its sole intelligible way. Thus, with self-reproach at, heart, I must incessantly be seeking to beat down misunderstanding (which I feed myself), worry, want, vexation, — merely to say what I see but cannot be ! Not to go under, I look up to thee ; and the more I cry, Help, be near me ! — the farther dost thou vanish, and a voice makes answer to me : " In this world, where thou burden'st thyself with this want, to realise thine images, — in this world she belongs not to thee ; for that which mocks thee, racks thee, everlastingly misunderstands thee, it compasses even her about ; to it she belongs, and it has a claim on her. Why does she, too, delight in thine art? Thine art belongeth to the world, and she — belongeth likewise to the world." — Oh, if ye foolish men of learning but understood the great love-brimming Buddha, ye would marvel at the depth of insight which shewed him the exercise of art as the most certain of all pathways from salvation ! Believe me, I know what I am saying ! Happy Ananda ! Happy Sawitri ! October 6. The piano has just arrived, been unpacked, and set up.- While it was being tuned, I read thy Spring diary through again. There, too, the Erard figures. — I have been very much moved since its arrival, for the history of this instrument is full of meaning. Thou know'st how long VENICE DIARY 57 I had wished for it in vain. Then last January, when I went to Paris — thou know'st for why? — strange, how it struck me to sue so actively for just such a piano ! Not one of my projects did I take in earnest ; all was indifferent to me ; nothing did I pursue with an atom of zeal. Yet it was different with my visit to Frau Erard ; in presence of that altogether dull, insignificant person I became rightdown inspired, and transported her — as I heard thereafter — to regular enthusiasm : with the turn of a wrist I won the instrument, as if in fun. Odd instinct of nature, how it comes out in every individual, according to his character, as simply that of preservation of his Jife ! — The import of that acquisition was soon to grow yet clearer to me. On the 2nd of May, just ere thou too wast to start for " change of scene," and I must be left so wholly forlorn, — the long-expected came to hand. While it was being set in my room the weather outside was bad, raw and cold ; I had abandoned every hope of seeing thee that day upon the terrace. The piano was not quite fitted, when — of a sudden — thou stepp'st from the billiard-room on to the front balcony, sitt'st down on a chair, and look'st over here. Then all was ready, I opened the window, and struck the first chords ; but thou hadst no idea, as yet, that this was the Erard. — For a month I saw thee no more, and in that interval it became clearer and surer to me that we must henceforth stay apart ! Then I should really and truly have done with my life, but this wondrous soft, sweet melancholy instrument wooed me right back to music once more. So I called it the swan that had come to bear poor Lohengrin home again ! — Thus did I begin the composition of the second act of Tristan. Life wove its web around me like a dream of existence. — Thou returnedst ; we did not speak with one another, but my swan sang across to thee. — And now I've fared right forth from thee, the Alps lie piled up heaven-high between us, it becomes ever clearer to me how all must turn, how everything will be, and that I now shall live a life no more. — Ah ! if the Erard but came, it must help, — have I often thought — for, when all's said — things must be ! I had long to wait, but here it is at last, that cunning tool with its lovely timbre, which I won in those weeks when I knew that I should lose thy presence. How symbolically plain my genie here speaks to me, — my dsemon ! How unconsciously I erst happed on the piano, yet my sly vital spark knew what it wanted ! — The piano ! — Ay, a wing,* — were it the wing of the angel of death ! — October 9. I have begun — what with? Of our songs I had only the pencilled jottings, often entirely unworked up, and so faint that I was afraid of clean forgetting them some day. So I first set to work playing them over to myself again, and calling every detail back to memory ; then I wrote them carefully out. Now thou need'st not send me thine again ; I have them all myself. — So, that was my first task, my pinions are preened. — Better than these songs have I never done, and very little in my works will bear setting beside them. " und lost dein Rathsel — heil'ge Natur "— f I had a strong mind to re-christen the " heil'ge Natur " — the thought is right, but not the expression : Nature is no- t The last words of " Stehe Still ! "— Tr. VENICE DIARY 59 where holy, saving where she revokes and denies herself —but for thy sake I have let it stand October 12. My friend Schopenhauer somewhere says : " It is much easier to expose the faults and errors in a great mind's work, than to give a complete and lucid exposition of its value. For the faults are single things and finite, which therefore can be fully surveyed ; but this, on the contrary, is the stamp impressed by Genius on its works, that their excellence is unfathomable and inexhaustible." — I apply this saying with sincerest conviction to thy last letter. What to me seemed erroneous therein was so easy for me to review, and therefore at first I could deliver myself on that alone : but the deep, divine and beautiful thereof is so infinite and inexhaustible, that I can only enjoy it, not speak about it even to thyself. What profound consolation, the only one possible, it affords me to know thee so high and sublime, I can attest to thee through nothing save the whole further and concluding tendence of my life. How its outward course will shape, I certainly cannot foretell, for that belongs to Fate ; but the inner core, from which to shape the dispensations of my outward fate, is settling in me to a firm, clear consciousness, whose purport I will outline here as well as I am able. — My course of life till the time when I found thee, and thou at last becamest mine, lies plain before me. The nature of the world, in its contrast with my own, had been making itself more and more painfully and cheerlessly clear to me, and more and more consciously and definitely had 60 WA&MEfc TO MATHILDE WESENtXDNCK * I been withdrawing from my relations therewith, yet without being able as artist and indigent man entirely to snap all bonds that chained me to it. I shunned men, since their contact pained me, and sought with strenuous design for isolation and retirement ; yet the more ardently did I cherish the yearning to find in one heart, in one specific individual, the sheltering, redeeming haven to harbour me entire and whole. By the world's nature this could only be a loving woman : even without having found her, that was bound to be clear to my clairvoyant poet's-eye ; and the sheer impossibility of finding what I longed for in the friendship of a man, could but be proved me by the noblest attempts thereat. Yet, never did I dream that I should find what I sought so absolute, so realising every wish, so satisfying every longing, as I found it in thee. Once more : — that thou couldst hurl thyself on every conceivable sorrow of the world, to say to me " I love thee ! " — redeemed me, and won for me that solemn pause * whence my life has gained another meaning. But that state divine indeed was only to be won at cost of all the griefs and pains of love: we have drunk them to their dregs ! — And now, after suffering every sorrow, being spared no grief, now must the quick of that higher life shew clear which we have won through all the suffering of those birth-throes. In thee it lives so pure and sure already, that I need only shew thee to thy joy, thy fellow-joy, what shape it now takes in myself. The world is overcome; in our love, our sufferings, it has overcome itself. No longer is it a foe that I flee, but an object void of substance, indifferent to my will, towards which I bear myself now without dread, without pain, and therefore with no actual revulsion. I feel this ever more distinctly, in that I no longer recognise the bent to absolute retirement as theoretically strong in me. That VENICE DIARY 6 1 tent itself had heretofore the sense of longing, seeking and desiring : but that — oh yes, I feel it ! — is now completelystilled ; the last issues between us have brought me the clear consciousness that I have simply nothing more to seek, no more to yearn for. After the fulness wherewith thou hast given thyself to me, I cannot call it resignation, still less despair. That reckless mood confronted me before with exit [by death?] from all my seeking and yearning : from its necessity, beatified by thee, I am redeemed. My feeling is one of a sacred satiety ; the bent is slain, because it is completely satisfied. — Informed with this consciousness, I look afresh upon the world, which consequently dawns upon me in an altogether new light ; for I have nothing more to seek in it, no more to discover a spot wherein I might be sheltered from it. To me it has become quite an objective spectacle like Nature, in which I see day come and go, seeds of life sprout and decay, without feeling my inner self dependent from that coming and going, that sprouting and decay ; I bear myself towards it almost solely as seizing and re-presenting artist, as a man who feels and fellow-feels, yet without willing, seeking or striving, himself. Even in purely external regards I recognise this new relation, inasmuch as that craving, so well known to thee, for a lonely and sequestered dwelling-place has practically left me; tho' I admit that the sad fruit of experience has had its share in that. For what could best have met my fondest wishes, in that sense, yet left me in the end unsatisfied ; since it was precisely there I had to learn from our severance, and the necessity of that severance, that the longed asylum neither can nor ever shall be furnished me. And where in the world now, should I will to found myself a fresh asylum? When I left the fatal last one, I became entirely insensible to such a wish.— On the contrary, I feel so strengthened and soothed in my inmost depth now, so sheltered and protected from all the world by the everlasting, inviolable and indestructible haven I've won in thy heart, that from its refuge, which accompanies me throughout the world, I can look with calmly pitying smile upon this world ; to which I may now belong without a shudder, just because I belong thereto no more — no more as suffering, but merely as fellow-suffering subject. Wherefore I now yield myself completely wish-less to the figuration of my outward fate, submissive to it just as it may hap. I strive for nothing : what presents itself, and is not against my deep enlightenment, I shall tranquilly take, without hope, but also without despair, and go on proffering to the world, as well as the world permits, the best I can, untroubled for reward, ay, even for understanding. — Following this tranquil trend (the fruit of endless battles with the world, and finally of my redemption through thy love!), presumably I shall some day pitch my tent where ample artistic means are to be had without my needing first to fash myself for their procuring (to me the game no longer is serious enough for that !), so that I may give myself a periodic hearing of my works according as the spirit moves me. Naturally, any kind of " position " or " appointment " could not even remotely enter my plans. Neither, for that matter, have I the slightest preference for this or that particular spot; for — nowhere shall I seek again for something definite or individual, to say nothing of intimate : from that craving, in truth, I am freed ! On the contrary, I shall simply grasp whatever allows me the most general, maybe even the most superficial, bearings towards my surroundings ; and that is like to come the easier, the larger is the place. I haven't the remotest idea of withdrawing into any sort of intimacy, e.g. to Weimar; in fact, such a thought is distinctly repugnant to me. For I can only VENICE DIARY 63 act up to my deeply settled attitude towards the world by taking men quite in the general, without any sort or kind of closer individual relationship ; an endeavour like that at Zurich, where I tried to draw each single creature to me, can never attract me again. — There thou hast the main features of my frame of mind. What will come of it outwardly — as said — I cannot predetermine, as it also is indifferent to my deepest soul. Of anything permanent for my future I do not think at all : while striving after permanence I grew so used to change, that I the more willingly yield the latter play now, the less I have a — wish. How our personal intercourse, thine and mine, will shape itself — the only question left to agitate me — I suppose we must also leave, my love, to Fate. Here lies, in truth, the one sore point, the thorn of suffring and of bitterness toward others, who make the heavenly boon of nearness impossible for us, without securing for themselves the smallest gain thereby ! Here we are not free, but hang from those to whom we sacrifice ourselves and to whom we turn back, with the one great sacrifice at heart, to exert on them our next compassion. Thou wilt bring up thy children :— accept my full blessing thereon ! Shouldst thou have joy of them and their flourishing, I shall ever look towards thee with naught but deep contentment. — * Haply also we shall meet again, yet meseems but as in dream at first — like two departed spirits that meet on the scene of their sufferings, once more to feast on the look, the pressure of the hand, that raised them from this world to win them Heaven. If perchance — by cause of my profound appeasement — a green old age be granted me, perhaps 'tis yet reserved me to return for good to thy proximity, some day when every pang of jealousy is overcome. The " Asyl " then might yet becomeja truth at last. Maybe I then should even need some tending : I am sure it would not be denied me. Perhaps — one morn thou yet wouldst step through the green workroom to my bedside, and with one parting kiss receive my spirit in thine arms. — And thus my diary would close as it began. — Yes, my child, so let this diary be closed herewith! It offers thee my suffering, my lifting up, my struggles, my looks into the world, and over all — my everlasting love to thee ! Entreat it kindly, and forgive me if on any page it opens up a wound. — I shall now return to " Tristan," to let the deep art of sounding silence there speak for me to thee. As for present things, the great isolation and retirement in which I live refreshes me : in it I'm collecting my sorely shattered vital forces. Already since a little while I enjoy the boon, almost never known by me to this extent, of deep and quiet sleep at night : would I could give it to everyone ! This I shall enjoy till my amazing work has thriven to completion ; not until then will I look around for once, to see what face the world presents to me. The Grand Duke of Baden has [?] effected thus much, that I may return awhile to Germany for the personal production of a new work ; perhaps I shall make use of it for the Tristan. Till then I stay alone with that in my dream-world turned to life here. If aught occurs to me worth telling, I shall jot it down, store it up, and thou shalt receive it as soon as thou wishest. We shall give each other tidings of ourselves as frequently as possible ? They can do naught but delight us now, for all is crystal-pure between us, and no misunderstanding, VENICE DIARY 65 no mistake, can cumber us again. So fare thee well, my heaven, my redemptrix, my pure, angelic love, farewell ! Be blessed from the devoutest depth of my soul ! {Here ends the first diary, despatched forthwith^ Venice 1858. October 18. A year ago to-day we had a beautiful day at the Willes. It was the season of wonders, we were celebrating the 1 8th of September [completion of the Tristan poem]. As we returned from our walk and were mounting the hill thy husband offered Frau Wille his arm, so I also might offer thee mine. We spoke of Calderon : how well he served ! Indoors I went straight to the new grand piano : myself, I did not understand how I could play so finely. — It was a glorious, a glutting day — hast thou kept it to-day ? Oh, that fair time had to bloom for us once! It passed — but the flower fades not ; that breathes its everlasting perfume in our souls. — A letter from Liszt arrived also to-day, and gave me great joy ; so that — with fine weather here too — I'm in quite a calmly-cheerful mood. I had written him lastly on various tender points : I had to, as he really is so dear to me, and I therefore felt candour a duty ; and behold, he answers me with unwavering gentleness. From this beautiful experience I learn that I have not to repent my recognition of the impossibility of a perfect friendship such as floats before us as ideal ; since it has by no means made me insusceptible, but on the contrary, all the more grateful and sensible to what presents itself as some approach to that ideal. Between Liszt's intelligential character and my own there is so great and essential a difference, that the difficulty — I must believe, in fact, impossibility — of making myself understood of him, often tortures me and drives me into bitter irony : but here love steps so beautifully in, with its very own allowances and satisfactions, that I'm half inclined to think warm friendship possible twixt man and man only when their modes of view are different. For it really is this friendly feeling alone, that can bring about agreement in the male sex : probably they never will fully concur in their views, or at most when they are insignificant persons and their views relate to common everyday things ; if they touch on something higher and uncommon, it could wellnigh only be a case of the equations of practical logic, such as may occur in the sphere of science : the true glow of friendship, however, first enters at the very point where differences are equalised thereby and shewn to have no importance, as it were by a higher intervener. This agreeable feeling I have repeatedly received through Liszt before ; yet I will not deny, that — on calm reflection — I think it well we should never be long and close together, since I should then have to fear too strong a salience of our dissimilarity : at a distance we gain very much to each other. — But we — : far and near, we are united — mated — one ! — October 24. How much I hang from thee, Beloved, I again have felt most keenly at this serious time. My mood of deep and beautiful tranquillity I had really won through thee alone : I knew thee so serene and lofty, that I could but be it too. And then this mourning, this woeful suffering, to know thee smitten with the loss of thy little boy : * how everything VENICE DIARY 67 of a sudden was changed ! All pride, all calm, dissolved so swiftly into fear and trembling; deep trouble, weeping and lamenting ; the built-up world all tottering, my gaze on it blurred by tears. Truly, an outer Power has come once more to knock at the gate of our hearts and prove if all is right within. It has been a time of seriousness ; thou wilt recognise that only with an effort, wellnigh not at all, could I think of my work in days like these? — Yet from that I don't infer that there is something amiss with me ; rather is it growing clear to me that even this work is merely one utterance of my being, which has other, surer channels of expression at command. I am able to suffer and mourn with thee : could I do aught finer, when thou art suffering and mourning? Now let me hear from thee soon, that I may behold thee with utmost distinctness in this trial of so grave a meaning ! What thou tell'st to me, as everything that comes from thee, will teach me and enrich me with a noble gain. Speak to me out of that feeling which habituates itself to embrace the whole world, wherein thy child with its existence — its tender death — was held as well ; be sure of being kindly and devoutly understood of me in everything ! — Thou poor dear child !— October 31, evening. Dost not know, then, my child, that I depend from thee alone — from thee alone — that the earnest cheerfulness which closed the diary sent to thee was a mere mirror of thy beauteous mood as told to me ? O, hold me not so great that I could be what and how I am entirely of and through myself! How deeply I feel that now, when unspeakable grief and woe have cloven me to the midriff ! — I have received thy packet, read thy diary, thine answer, — dost really not yet know, then, how I live on thee alone? Didst not believe it, when I had it told thee but lately again ? * To be like thee, worthy of thee, is the holdfast of my life ! So do not chide me if I once more tell thee, I am altogether as thyself, feel as thou, entirely share thy every mood, thy faintest grief, not merely because it is thine, but because it so clearly and surely is also my own ! — Hast forgotten how we wrote each other when I was in Paris,t and that joint lament burst simultaneously from our hearts, after we had told each other our resolves as if inspired ? So it still is, so will it remain, for ever and ever! — Everything is Wahn, everything selfdelusion ! We are not made, to square the world to us. O thou dear angel of pellucid truth, be blest for thy heavenly love ! O, I knew all ; what fearsome days did I live through, what waxing apprehension ! The world was at a stop, to me, and I could breathe but when I felt thy breath. — O my sweet, sweet girl, I cannot comfort thee to-day, poor doleful, broken-down man that I am ! Neither can I give thee balm, and — " have I indeed no healing for thee ? " How should I have power to give thee healing ? My tears are flowing in full salt streams — : might they have power to heal thee ? — I know, they are the tears of love, of such love as never was before : in them flows all the lamentation of the world, and yet the only rapture I would fain experience now, to-day, they give to me ; they give me a deep, deep inward certitude, an inexpugnable, inalienable right, for they are the tears of my eternal love to thee. Might such tears heal thee ? — O heavens ! more than once I have been on the point of starting, to come into thy precincts : have I refrained out of care for myself? Nay ! oh, nay ; but of care — for thy children ! Wherefore — once again — and ever : courage ! — 'tis needed for a while yet. Methinks — methinks — I might — ere long present VENICE DIARY 69 myself more fairly to thee, more acceptably, worthier of thee : and how gladly would I !— but what boots Would ? — No ! no ! sweet child, I know all ! I understand all :— I see clear, clear as day ! I'm going mad ! — Let me break off now ! Not to seek rest, but to deliver myself over to drown in the rapture of my grief! — O my precious ! —Nay ! Nay ! He'll not betray thee. Not— he!— November 1. To-day is All Souls' day!— I woke out of brief, but deep sleep, after long and fearful sufferings such as I never had suffered before. I stood upon the balcony, and peered into the Canal flowing black below; a tempest was raging, my leap, my fall, would have been noticed by no one. I were free of torments, once I sprang, and I clenched my fist to mount the hand-rail. — Could I — with my sight on thee, — upon thy children ? — Now All Souls' day has broken ! — All Souls ! peace be with you ! — Now I know it still is granted me to die within thine arms! Yes, I know it! — — I shall see thee soon again : certainly by the Spring ; perchance the middle of this winter. — See, my child, the last sting has left my soul ! I can bear anything now. We soon shall meet again ! — Place no reliance on my art ! I have discovered all about it now : 'tis no solace, no compensation to me ; it is simply the accompanist of my deep harmony with thee, the fosterer of my wish to perish in thine arms. When the Erard arrived, it could lure me only since thy deep unfaltering love shone out more fixt and brightly on me after the storm than ever : with thee I can do all things — without thee nothing, nothing ! Don't let thyself be cheated even by the expression of calm serenity that concluded my last diary ; it was nothing but the reflex of thine own fair, noble elevation. Everything falls asunder with me, so soon as I espy the slightest want of harmony between us ; believe me, only one ! — thou hold'st me in thy hands, and with thee alone can I — achieve. — So, after this terrible night I pray thee : — Have trust in me, unconditional, boundless trust ! And that but means again : Believe that with thee I can do all things, without thee nothing ! — So thou knowest who disposes of myself, my acts and sufferings ; 'tis thou, e'en when I'm seized with foolish qualms about thee. And thus, too, am I sure of thee ; thou wilt not forsake me, not turn a deaf ear on me, but guide me loyally through want and misery. Thou canst not else : this night I have won a fresh claim on thee — thou canst not know me given back to life, to grudge me any act of grace. So help me, then ! and I will help thee loyally too. — Help me also to bear the frightful load that weighs on my heart ! — A load it is ; but on my heart it weighs. — Yesterday I received from a reliable physician the exact report on my wife's illness [see p. xiv] : she seems past saving. She is threatened with development of dropsy in the chest : increasing, perhaps protracted, but ever more agonising pain, with death for sole prospect of rescue. The only thing to ease and make it bearable, is utmost quiet, avoidance of all moral agitation. — Help me to tend the unfortunate ! True, I shall only be able to do it from a distance, since I myself must deem remoteness from her the aptest of means. When I'm near her, I become incapable of it : my presence, moreover, is bound to upset her ; only at a distance can I calm her, as I then can VENICE DIARY 7 1 choose my time and mood so as ever to be mindful of my task towards her. But neither can I do that, unless— thou help'st me. I must not know thy heart bleeding; I must not feel myself in the misery of being able to offer thee no physic for thy wounds ! That breaks me in a thousand pieces, and leads me thither whence I returned last night to thee once more! Thou understandest me, my angel, dost thou not? Thou know'st that I am thine, and thou alone disposest of my actions, steps, my thoughts and resolutions ? Do not scruple to acknowledge it — for so it is! No Swan can help me, if thou help'st me not: nothing has sense or meaning, save through thee ! O believe it, believe it ! — So, if I bid thee, Help me, help me to this or that, I merely mean : Believe that through thee alone can .1 do aught, and naught without thee ! That is the whole secret. — I have become more deeply cognisant thereof than ever. Since the death of thy little son, it has stood sadly with my work ; then I saw right clearly that it was no comfort to me, but merely the expression of the lone man who felt himself made one with thee and had not to distress himself about thee. Ah, that's why it long has gone hard with it : in truth, 'tis but a game to me ; my true earnest abides not therewith, as it never was really quite in it, but over and away from it, in what I yearned for, and now in what alone' still makes me capable of life and art-work ! O believe ! believe me that thou alone art my earnest ! — Last night, when I drew my hand back from the raif of the balcony, it was not my art that withheld me ! In that terrible instant there shewed itself to me with wellnigh visual distinctness my life's true axis, round which my resolution whirled from death to new existence : it was Thou ! — Thou ! — Like a smile the thought stole over me : - Were it not sweeter to die in her arms ? — J 2 WAGNER TO MATHILDE WESENDONCK Be not vexed with me, my child: "Die Thrane quillt, die Erde hat mich wieder ! " * — All Souls' day ! The day of resurrection ! — I'm writing Heim to-day, to retain me the free pass for the Erard, after all ; I think of making use of it, some day, to take the instrument back into Switzerland duty-free. The swan has lost much of its meaning since last night; it is hardly worth my promising thee delight therefrom in future ! — Our lot is hard, very hard, my beloved child ; yet in exchange, we're rich enough to be able to pay each debt of life and still keep for ourselves the most infinite gain. But thou'lt not be dumb towards me, wilt thou? — and — if I cannot "heal" thee, at least thou'lt not despise my "balm"?— We shall see each other soon. Farewell ! All Souls' day ! Farewell ! — And wish me well ! — November 24. Venice. Karl [Ritter] has left me for a while, to congratulate his sick mother on her birthday ; he will come back shortly. At our parting he much affected me, the queer creature could hardly tear himself away. I really think, whoever has been much with me in these last months, must have derived a good impression ; certainly I have never been so clear in everything, as now, or felt so little bitterness, wellnigh none at all. Who knows so surely that he has nothing left to seek, and henceforth but to give, is really also reconciled to all the world ; for his quarrel with it had VENICE DIARY 73 consisted simply in his seeking something, where nothing could be given him. And how does one attain this wondergift of Giving ? To be sure, but through one's own desiring nothing more oneself: he who is conscious that the only happiness to touch the bottom of his heart lies quite beyond the power of the world to give him, at last feels, too, how justified it is in refusing what it cannot give. But what do we signify by the World ? In our sense, all those human beings who are practically able to give to themselves what their happiness asks : honour, fame, property, smooth wedlock, diverting society, Possession in every shape; and who does not attain it, scolds the world for his pains. But how ill were it of us, to scold the world, since we truly ask naught of all that it can give and take at its good pleasure ! So I pityingly turn my gaze back to mankind, and rejoice in the gifts which allow me the power of comforting where Illusion lays up sorrow for itself. Who stands so high, however, so wondrously upraised above the world, should also under no condition ask aught of it, or aught accept of it, but what upraises and endows the giver's self through that acceptance. If, on the contrary, we craved of it an actual sacrifice, felt by it as such — something it grudged to give, — that ought to shew us at once that we had descended from our plateau, and were in act of somewhat derogating from our dignity. This, too, was the meaning of the Buddhist mendicancy; the monk, who had renounced all possessions, quietly took his station in the streets and before men's houses, to bless those who should tender him alms by acceptance thereof. What would the pious renunciant have thought of himself, if he had had to wring a gift from an unwilling giver, perchance to stay his hunger ; his, to whom hunger was a devotional exercise ? I was glad to find my mind already clear about this doctrine of giving and receiving, when I had to answer the letter of a friend on the Lake of Zurich not long since.* How despicable, eh ! how criminal would that have been which in that evil sense I should have had to extort from the spirit of the world itself, a spirit which would believe itself making a concession to me at the very time I fancied it raised up to me by my high opinion of it. How proud I was then, but not bitter ; the Buddhist beggar had stationed himself before the wrong house, and hunger became a devotion : where I dreamed of rendering happy, one thought of being called to sacrifice oneself to me. Needed it more, than to recognise that error? And had I to renounce my last breath of life, what lives within me stays pure and divine if no sacrifice of the World's attaches to it. This is the knowledge — this the will — that magnifies us so, that gives us the stupendous power of feeling pain itself no more, and — making hunger a devotion. — I had a winter-journey in view. That is abandoned, but I see the world still clearer now ; with each devotion my spirit strengthens to a power of working miracles. I must have much control over people now : that I judged by Karl, when he said goodbye for a little while. — I am not always quite well, still my mood for the most part stays bright and unruffled, nor can I help smiling when Koboldchen flits t : I heard its rattle yesterday again. — December i. Here have I been, poor wretch, confined to my room once more for a week, and this time even to my chair, t See Grimms' fairy-tale, referred to in letter 42. — Tr. VENICE DIARY 75 from which I dare not rise, and out of which I have to be carried to bed of nights. Yet it is nothing more than an outward affliction, which I even regard as altogether determinant of my health ; so that my condition even fills me with hope of being able to keep to my work quite undisturbed in future, whereas its interruption was the main thing that made my previous illnesses so insufferable to me. — At such times my intellect is always wide awake, plans and sketches actively engage my fancy ; this time it was philosophic problems that engrossed me. Of late I have slowly been reading friend Schopenhauer's chief work straight through again, and this time it has extraordinarily incited me to expansion and even — on some points — amendment of his system. The subject is uncommonly weighty, and perhaps it had to be reserved for my peculiar nature, precisely at this quite peculiar epoch in my life, to arrive at insights which could open to no other man. For it is a matter of demonstrating a path of salvation recognised by none of the philosophers, particularly not by Sch., — the pathway to complete pacification of the Will through love, and that no abstract love of mankind, but the love which actually blossoms from the soil of sexual love, i.e. from the affection between man and woman. It is conclusive, that I am able to use for this (as philosopher, — not as poet, since as such I have my own) the terminology which Sch. himself supplies me. The exposition leads very deep and far, for it embraces a preciser explanation of the state in which we become able to apprehend Ideas, as also of that of Genius {Genialitaf), which I no longer conceive as a state of disengagement of the intellect from the will, but rather as an enhancement of the intellect of the individual to a cognitive organ of the race itself (Erkenntnissorgan der Gattung), thus of the Will as Thing-in-itself ; whence alone, moreover, is to be explained that strange enthusiastic joyfulness and rapture in the supreme moments of geni-al cognition which Sch. seems hardly to know, as he can find it [i.e. that mode of cognition] only in repose and in the silencing of the individual passions. Quite analogously to this conception, I then arrive with greatest certainty at proving in Love a possibility of attaining to that exaltation above the instinct of the individual will where, after complete subjection of this latter, the racial will comes to full consciousness of itself; which upon this height is necessarily tantamount to complete pacification. All this will be made clear even to the inexperienced, if my statement succeeds ; whilst the result cannot but be very significant, and entirely and satisfactorily fill the gaps in Schopenhauer's system. We will see if I'm in the mood for it some day. — * December 8. To-day I have been into the open air again for the first time. I'm not completely well yet, nevertheless this last illness — in which I really was quite helpless, as I could not stir a foot — has enlightened me about myself quite satisfactorily, through the experiences reaped from it. Karl has been away nearly 3 weeks [p. 72], so that I had almost "Metaphysics of Sexual Love. — 'Each year presents us with one or another case of concerted suicide of a loving, but outwardly impeded pair. To myself it nevertheless remains inexplicable, how two persons assured of mutual love, and anticipating the utmost bliss from its fruition, should not rather adopt the extremest steps to extricate themselves from all relations and suffer any ignominy, than give up with their lives a happiness beyond which they can conceive of no greater' [Welt als Wille u. V. ii. § 44]. " It flatters me to suppose that you really have not yet discovered any explanation of this, as it tempts me to connect with such a point VENICE DIARY 77 nobody to talk with except my doctor and the servants ; oddly also, I never felt the least desire for company, but quite the reverse. When a Russian prince here* — whom I could not quite shake off, and who combines a right good-heartedness with much intelligence, particularly in respect of music — came to call on me one day, I was heartily glad at bottom when he left ; I always feel it a useless, altogether profitless exertion, to — entertain myself with anybody. On the other hand, I'm always glad to see the servants ; here the still naive man appeals to me, with all his faults and merits. And they have tended me right well, in fact with some self-sacrifice, for which I am very grateful : Kurwenal, for once, stands nearer me than Melot. Moreover, communications from without kept silent almost all the time, the postman hardly ever shewed his face. When I reached the Piazza to-day in the gondola, the whole place was swarming with life and colour ; but I have chosen an hour for dining when I'm sure of being quite alone in the restaurant, so I slipped unnoticed through the motley throng once more, back to my gondola, and fared down the silent canal to my earnest palace. The lamp is burning, to submit to you a view whereby I think I can see in the beginnings of sexual love itself one path of salvation, to self-knowledge and self-denial of the Will, and that not merely of the Individual will. " You alone supply me with the terminology whereby my view may be imparted philosophically; and, in attempting to make my meaning clear, I rely on nothing but what I have learnt through yourself. Please attribute it to my inexpertness, perhaps also to my inaptitude for dialectics, if it is only by a circuitous route — and in particular, by first reciting the highest and most perfect instance of that resolution of the Will which I refer to — that I arrive at an explanation of the case adduced by you ; which, again, I can only regard as an imperfect and lower grade of that other." Combining the two passages, we could wish for no completer refutation of the "Tristan and Isolde " slanderers old and new. — Tr. everything is so still and grave around me; and within the sure, unequivocal feeling that this is the world for me, from which my longing can reach forth no more without grief and self-deception. So I feel happy in it ; the servants often catch me in the blithest humour, and then I'm fond of joking with them. — With reading, too, I stay most limited ; little tempts me. In the long run I always hark back to my Schopenhauer, who has led me to the most remarkable trains of thought, as lately indicated, in amendment of some of his imperfections. The theme becomes more interesting to me every day, for it is a question here of explications such as I alone can give, since there never was another man who was poet and musician at once, in my sense, and therefore to whom an insight into inner processes has become possible such as could be expected of no other* — I meant also to read Humboldt's Letters to a Lady-friend, but could only get the booklet of Elisa Mayer, about him and with extracts from him. I laid this little tract down much dissatisfied : unmistakably the best of it was what my lady-friend already had extracted from it for me. Whoever knows Humboldt well, will certainly make acquaintance with a very able scientific student and inquirer. As man, too, he must have been most pleasing and attractive ; I cannot quarrel with Schiller for having frequented his society ; such a man would have been very valuable to myself. Productive minds need closer contact with such decidedly receptive natures, were it only because one often wants to give of oneself unchecked ; whereas one easily consoles oneself for discovering, on a final valuation, that VENICE DIARY 79 the assumption of one's having been quite grasped was really nothing, after all, but our own good faith. As a fact, Humboldt didn't comprehend much of the essence of things ; there he remains decidedly shallow and ordinary, and this parson-like cant about Providence and the kind God is a little surprising in the intimate friend of Schiller, the pupil of Kant. I very soon saw that this man, too, was one of those of whom Jesus said : it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for them to enter the kingdom of Heaven ! The perpetually-recurrent ensurance of his easy circumstances is positively droll : to two inherited fortunes he weds two others, and further receives from the State the present of a fifth ; robust and well brought up, he marries young a wife he can love with full sincerity until his death : add to all which a lively mind, an era of Schiller and Goethe, and I should say one couldn't be more luckily equipped by " Providence " ; neither for his becoming a statesman and diplomat, one hopes, had he Providence to blame. — The more touching and affecting, however, is the love of this man, and his gentle exit from the world. Above all, / thank him for one deep and final anodyne, through a tiny immaterial saying which my lady-friend, however, repeated to me with so wondrous beautiful an accent of innocence that those few lines have made a great impression on me, pointing out the only path to hope : it was the passage about "confidence" and "confidences." — Since yesterday I have been occupied with the Tristan again. I'm in the second act still, but — what music it's becoming! I could work my whole life long at this music alone. O, it grows deep and fair, and the sublimest marvels fit so supply to the sense ; I have never made a thing like this ! But I also am melting away in this music ; I'll hear of no more, when it's finished. In it will I live for aye, and with me — December 22. A lovely morning, dear child ! For three days had I been plodding at the passage " Wen du umfangen, wem du gelacht " and " In deinen Armen, dir geweiht," etc. — I had been long interrupted, and could not find the corner in my memory for its working out ; it made me seriously uneasy. I could get no farther, — when Koboldchen tapped, it shewed its face to me as gracious Muse, and in an instant the passage was clear ; I sat down to the piano, and wrote it off as rapidly as if I had known it by heart for ever so long. A severe critic will find a touch of reminiscence in it : the " Traume " flit close by ; but thou'lt forgive me that — my darling ! — Nay, ne'er repent thy love of me : 'tis heavenly ! — 1859. January 1. Nay ! ne'er repent them, those caresses wherewith thou deck'dst my threadbare life : I had not known them, those flowers of bliss, bloomed from the purest soil of noblest love ! What I had dreamt as poet, was destined once to turn out for myself so wondrous true, on the common clay of my earthly existence was destined once to fall that gentle quick'ning and refreshing dew : I never had hoped it, and yet it is to me as if I still had known it. Now am I raised to nobility, I have received the highest badge of knighthood ; at thy heart, in thine eye, by thy lips — have I been raised out of the world, every inch of me now is free and noble. As with holy awe at my lordship, I'm thrilled through and through with the sense of having been loved by thee with such abundance, so exquisitely tenderly, and yet so altogether chastely! — Ah, I still breathe it, the magic fragrance of those blooms thou pluck'dst me from thy VENICE DIARY 8 1 heart ! They were not buds of life : so smell the wonderblooms of heavenly death, of life eternal ; so decked they of yore the hero's corse, ere it was burnt to godlike ashes. Into that grave of flames and perfumes leapt his loved one, to mingle her beloved's ashes with her own — and they were one ! One element, not two loving mortals : one divine ur-substance of eternity ! — Nay, ne'er repent those flames ; their fire was radiant, pure and white ! No lurid glow, no fumes, no acrid vapour soiled it aye, the clear chaste flame that shone for no one yet so pure and so transfiguring as for us, and therefore also none can know of. — Thy caresses — they are the crown of my life, the sweet roses that blossomed from the wreath of thorns wherewith alone my head was clad. Now am I proud and happy ! Not a wish, not a longing ! Delight, supreme consciousness, strength and aptitude for everything, for every storm of life ! — Nay I nay, repent them not ! Repent them ne'er ! — January 8. O Tag! Du aller guter Geister Gott Sei mir gegriisstl Gegriisst nach langer Nacht ! — Bringst Du von ihr mir Kunde ? — * April 4. Lucerne. The dream of Wiedersehen is dreamt ; so — have we met again. Was it not in reality naught but a dream ? These hours I have passed in thy house, in what do they differ from that other dream I erewhile dreamed so fondly of my coming back? Almost it stands before me more distinct, than the triste reality to which my memory will lend itself so little. To me, it is as if I actually had not seen thee plainly at all ; thick mists lay between us, through which scarce pierced the sound of voices. Also it is to me as if thou actually didst not see myself ; as if, in my stead, a ghost had come into thy house. Didst recognise me? — O heavens ! I recognise it : this is the road to sanctity ! Life, reality, ever more dreamlike, the senses numbed ; the eye — wide open — sees no more, — the willing ear forgoes all echo of the Present ; where we are, we see each other not ; only where we are not, rests each's gaze on each. Thus is the Present non-extant, and all our Future null. — Is my work really worth my preserving myself for? — But thou, thy children? — Let us live! — And when I read on thine own face the traces of so great a suffering, when I pressed to my lips thy shrunk hand— a deep throb shot through me, and called me to a finer duty. Our love's miraculous power has helped till now ; it strengthened me to win the possibility of a return ; it taught me this dreamlike oblivion of all the Present, enabling me to approach thy presence undeterred thereby ; it quenched all my chagrin and bitterness, so that I could kiss the very threshold which permitted me to pass to thee : so let me trust it ! It will also teach me to see thee plainly once again, e'en through the veil — which we have donned as penitents — to shew myself as well to thee all bright and clear I — - Thou heavenly saint, have trust in me ! I shall be able ! — Sg SEPT. 1858 TO MARCH 1859
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 57