Venice, Sept. 30, 58. To Frau Eliza Wille.* Believe me, dear honoured Lady, I must keep tight hold on myself, to hold out at all ! Almost every hour I have cause to remind myself : Sit tight ! otherwise all flies asunder ! — The one thing now left me is isolation, complete seclusion. It is my only comfort, only rescue ; and yet it's so unnatural, especially for me, who am so fond of unrestrained communication. However — unnatural is just the word for everything about me. I have no experience what family, relatives — children are : my wedlock has been nothing but a trial of my patience and pity. — By me no friend is thinkable, to whom I could , fully unbosom myself without repenting it ; every day I become more aware how misunderstood I always am, wholesale and retail ; and an inner voice, the voice of my truest nature, assures me it were better if I relentlessly freed, not only myself, but also my friends, from all illusion in that regard. — For, the whole world is nothing if not practical ; but with me the ideal gains such reality that it makes out my true life, and I can bear no jot thereof to be disturbed. Thus, arrived at my forty-sixth year, I'm forced to see that solitude must be my only solace and I must stand altogether alone. Tis so and I cannot deceive myself, 'tis this insight that keeps me from collapse, and were I once to act against it, I know I should be utterly lost : then bitter ire would deluge everything. So my motto is simply, Hold out — hold thy tongue ! * — When fancy gets full play at last, then things will go ; and mental work indemnifies, so long as it proceeds untroubled. But mind, in the long run, always feeds upon heart : and how waste that region stands with me ! — All foreign and cold around ! No lulling, not a look, no soothing sound. I have sworn not even to procure myself a little dog : it shall never be that I've a pet about me. — After all, she has her children ! — Nay, but that is no reproach, merely a moan ; and I think she likes to take me as I am, moaning and all. True, I have my art! Yet even that affords me no delight, and I can but shudder if I look away from my work to the world it will have to belong to; a world that only in the most repulsive mangling can make it its own ! — Yes, I ought not to think on it, as on so much else: I know that. Wherefore I also don't mean to, but keep on calling to myself : Sit tight ! it must be ! Go it must — and go it shall ! — Indeed she helps me charmingly ! What a heavenly letter was that you sent me to-day from her ! The dear sweet soul — let her be comforted ; her friend is faithful to her, lives on her alone — and therefore holds out ! — Ay ! it must go, and — go it shall ;— I imagine that Venice will help, and believe the selection was excellent. I really meant to write Wille a word or two about my life here ; but that also you must take on your shoulders. ijjee next page, also the Diary entry'of Nov. 24, p. 74, — Tr, He has already vouchsafed me an unheard-of sacrifice, a letter in which he simply gave me to understand the sacrifice it cost him. Tho' that was and sounded very waggish, I won't put him to the pains again ; * best for us to have another chat, about Venice this time, on the sofa in his red study with the fine antiques. Give him my very best anticipations ! — I am not leading an actual life as yet here ; there can be no question of that till I'm at work once more : and I still am waiting for the piano ! So rest content with a description of the terrain on which I have had to fix to live. Did you not write me, you knew this part? My palace lies about midway between the Piazzetta and the Rialto, close to the knee the Canal here makes, which is formed the sharpest by the Foscari palace (barracks now) at my side; right opposite is the Palazzo Grassi, which Herr Sina at present is having restored. My landlord is an Austrian, who received me enthusiastically for my famous name, and shews himself extraordinarily obliging to me in every way. (He also is the cause of my arrival's getting into the newspapers at once.) You have read how people regarded my being here as a political move, to worm my cautious track through Austria into Germany. Even friend Liszt was of that opinion, warned me, but also exhorted me to count on no successes of my operas in Italy, on which I surely must have had an eye : it really was not my terrain, and he was surprised at my refusal to see it. The answer to that I found most hard ! — I was supposed to be on my way to Vienna, too, as you probably know, but scarcely believed ? — I'm still the solitary guest (lodger) in my palace, and occupy spaces that scared me at first. However, I could find little cheaper, absolutely nothing more convenient ; so I moved into my big drawing-room, which is exactly twice as big as the Wesendoncks', with a passable ceilingpicture, splendid mosaic floor, and what is bound to be glorious resonance for the Erard. I took some pains forthwith to overcome the stiff unhomeliness of the upholstery ; the folding-doors between a huge bedroom and a little adjoining cabinet had to be removed at once, and portieres took their place, though of no such beautiful material as my last in the Asyl ; cotton must serve for the nonce to establish the stage-decoration. The colour had to be red this time, as the rest of the furniture was that already; only the bedroom is green. An immense hall gives space for my morning promenade; on one side it has a balcony over the canal, on the other it looks into the courtyard with a little well-paved garden. So here I pass my day till about 5 in the afternoon. Of a morning I make my own tea : I have two cups, one of which I bought here and Ritter gets to drink from, if I bring him back in the evening ; out of the other, which is very large and handsome, I drink myself. I also have a proper [? soda-]water-apparatus, which I didn't buy here : it is white with gold stars, which I have not counted yet, but presumably are more than seven* About S the gondolier is called, for I'm so situated that whoever wants to get at me must cross the water (which also affords me a pleasant shut-offness). Through the narrow alleys right and left, yet " sempre dritto " (as you know !) to the restaurant in S. Mark's Square, where I find Ritter as a rule. Thence " sempre dritto " in the gondola to the Lido or the Giardino publico, where I usually take my little promenade ; then back by gondola to the Piazzetta for another saunter, my glass of ice in the Cafe" de la Rotunde, and then to the traghetto, which returns me through the sombre night of the Canal to my palace, where a lighted lamp awaits me about 8 ! — The singular contrast of the still and melancholy grandeur of my abode and its site with the constant mirth and glitter of the Square and its belongings, the pleasing sense of personal indifference towards this throng, the perpetual din of wrangling gondoliers, and finally the quiet transit in the twilight or as night falls — hardly ever fails to make a grateful, and at last an agreeably calming impression upon me. And at this I have stopped, for the present ; as yet I have felt no craving for inspection of the art-treasures ; I reserve that for the winter : I'm glad enough, for now, to be able to taste this placid rise and setting of my day with equable content. — My mouth I open to no one but Ritter, who is so taciturn as never to disturb me ; he likewise is alone, his wife having stayed behind. We part on the traghetto every evening, and very seldom does he set his foot in my abode. — It would have been impossible for me to choose a spot better suited to my present needs. Utterly alone in an insignificant, uninteresting little place, a gregarious hankering after company would have been bound in the end to make me seize some opportunity of social intercourse ; and an acquaintanceship sprung from that sort of need, and finally consolidated, is just the thing to torture one at last. On the contrary, I could nowhere lead a more retired life than here ; for the interesting, theatrically absorbing spectacle that here renews for me its vivid contrast day by day prevents the faintest wish arising to play a definite individual r61e therein, since I feel I should then lose all the charm which the spectacle offers me as a purely objective beholder. Thus my life in Venice until now is a perfectly faithful image of my whole bearings toward the world at large ; at least as, in accord with my 90 WAGNER TO MATHH.DE WESENDONCK knowledge and resignative need, they must and shall be. How I have to regret it, every time I step beyond them ! — When they've played pieces from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin in S. Mark's Square — where we have a military band on Sunday evenings — it really seemed to me, for all my anger at the dragging tempo, as if I had nothing whatever to do with it. For that matter, I'm already known everywhere ; in particular, the Austrian officers often astonish me with signs thereof in delicate attentions. It has got about, however, that I wish to remain in most thorough seclusion, and after a few callers have been persistently refused admittance people are leaving me in peace. With the police I'm on excellent terms: certainly my. pass was demanded again, after a while, so that I began to think of measures commencing ; but it was soon sent me back with due ceremony, and the assurance that there was absolutely no objection to my continued stay in Venice. Thus Austria decidedly vouchsafes me refuge, which really is something worth acknowledgment. — What gives my life from within out so peculiar, almost dreamlike a character, is its utter lack of future; the sentiment of Humboldt and his lady-friend is altogether mine. When I go on the water of an evening, survey the mirror-bright expanse of sea, which, stretching motionless to the horizon, there joins the sky with absolutely no distinction to be noted, the evening red of the heavens completely wed to its reflection in the water — I have before me a faithful likeness of my present : what is present, past or future, is as little to be distinguished as there the sea and sky. Yet streaks then shew, flat isles that give the picture drawing here and there, and far away a ship's mast points on the horizon ; the star of evening shines, the fixed stars twinkle, above in the sky and below in the sea : — which is past, which future ? I see but stars and pure rose- tinted clarity, and in between them glides my bark, all noiseless with light plashing of the oar,— maybe that is the present. — Greet the dear angel many-thousand times, and tell her not to scorn the gentle tears that drip for me ! And if you partake of all as well, in power of your noble friendship, indeed, indeed we're happy ! — Farewell ! Your R. W. \To Frau Wesendonck henceforward.~\
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 58