Venice, Jan. 19, 59. Thanks for the lovely fable, Lady-friend [see p. 98]. 'Twere easy to explain how everything that comes from you always reaches me with symbolical significance. Precisely to the hour, the moment, came your greeting yesterday, as if a necessity conjured by magic ; I was seated at the piano ; the old gold pen was spinning its last web over the second act of Tristan, its touch just lingering on the fleeting joys of my pair of lovers' first re-meeting. When I yield to the sedative of a last enjoyment of my own creation, as happens with its instrumenting, I often get plunged in an infinitude of unbidden thoughts withal, which display to me the utterly peculiar nature of the poet, of the artist, forever unintelligible by the world. Then I plainly recognise herein the wonder of it, its total opposition to the usual view of life : whereas that view turns ever on the pivot of experience, poetic intuition, preceding all experience, embraces altogether of its ownest potency what first lends all experience a sense and meaning. If you were a regular adept at philosophy, I would call to your mind that here we meet in strongest measure the phenomenon whereby all manner of cognition first grows possible, to wit, by this : the whole scaffolding of Space, Time and Causality, wherein the world presents itself to us, pre-exists in our brain as its most distinctive function ; consequently these conditioning attributes of every thing, namely its dimension, duration and effectuation, are already contained in our head before our cognition of the things themselves, which we otherwise could not cognise at all. — Now, that which is upraised above Space, Time and Causality, and does not need these helps for its cognition ; that which is loosed from these conditions of finitude, and whereof Schiller so finely says that it alone is true (wahr) because it never was (war) ; this which is totally incomprehensible by the common view of the world only the poet cognises with that full prefigurement residing in himself, and governing all his fashionings, that he is able to represent it with infallible certainty, — this Something that is surer and more definite than any other object of cognition, albeit it bears on itself not one attribute of the world which we know by experience. — The supreme marvel must be, tho', if that foreknown essential Something should enter at last the poet's own experience. His Idea then will take great part in this experience's shaping : the purer and higher that, the more unworldlike and incomparable this ; it will purge his will, his' aesthetic interest will become a moral one, and to the highest poetic idea will link itself the highest moral consciousness. Then will it be his task to prove it in the moral world ; the same foreknowledge will guide him, that, as cognition of the aesthetic idea, had moved him to present that idea in his artwork and qualified him for the experience. — The common world, still standing under the influence of experiences forced upon it from without, and grasping nothing that is not driven home to its sense of touch, so to say, can never comprehend this position of the poet toward his experiential world. It will never be able to account for the striking positiveness of his fashionings, otherwise than that they must at some time have come as directly to his own experience as all that it has made a note of in its memory. That phenomenon I have observed the most surprisingly in my own case. With my poetic conceptions I have been so far ahead of my experiences, that I may consider my moral development as almost exclusively induced and brought about by those conceptions ; Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Nibelungs, Wodan— all existed earlier in my head than my experience. But the marvellous relation in which I stand to the Tristan now, you will easily perceive yourself: I say it openly, since it is an observation due to the initiated mind, though not to the world, that never has an idea so definitely passed into experience. How far the two predestined one another, is so subtle, so wondrous a regard, that the common mode of perception will be able to conceive it only in the sorriest distortion. And now, when Sawitri — Parzival^are filling my mind with previsions and striving to mould themselves next to the poetic idea— now to be bending o'er the work of artistic completion of my Tristan with all the calm of plastic meditation, — now ! who will divine the wonder that must fill me, and so waft me away from the world that to me it seems all but wholly overcome already ? You divine it, You know it ! Ay, and haply you alone ! — For if another guessed it, knew it, then no one would chafe at us more ; and every triste experience, invading his heart from without, he must needs offer up with a noble's sense of exaltation as a sacrifice due to, and in sympathy with, the higher ends of the World-spirit, which moulds from out itself experiences wherein to suffer, and through those sufferings to lift itself still higher. But — who will comprehend it? — would there be such nameless sorrow in the world, if our cognition were so much alike as the eudaemonistic will is like in all of us ? In this alone resides men's misery : if we all cognised the Idea of the world and of Existence alike and accordantly, that misery would be impossible. But whence this hurly-burly of religions, dogmas, opinions and eternally warring views ? Because all wish the same, without cognising it. So let the clearersighted save himself; and above all — let him dispute no more ! Let him mutely suffer of the madness that grins around him, thrusts at him in every shape, in every reference, demanding, where it is blind, coveting where it misjudges. Here nothing helps but — silence and endurance ! — All this will strike you as another fairy-tale ; yet perchance, as another, it holds the key to yours*: the grey sparrow extols its Creator, and as good as it understands Him, so good sounds its song ! — You see, I'm so happy as to be able to work again. And verily that is a happiness, whereas a really serious illness is no such great misfortune, since it also liberates the mind and sets the moral force in action. The worst of states is that in which we are not absolutely ill, yet hampered and unsettled ; where profound discomfort takes us in our contact with the outer world, wishes and requirements try to raise their voice, the instinct of activity finds no right fulcrum, all is barred, all clogged, nothing permitted, naught will fit. Where this void and cheerlessness arise — this longing, yearning, wanting — it is given to no mortal to maintain himself continually at height of his true nature ; for his whole existence is strictly based on one perpetual struggle with the more subsidiary conditions of its very possibility, and his higher nature can express itself through nothing but the final victory in this fight ; ay, it is nothing else except that victory, the force which compasses it, and thus at bottom one perpetual negation— namely, a denial of the sway of those subsidiary conditions. And this comes out so strikingly in the purely physical groundwork of our body itself, where all, even the chemical (vegetaleri) components of the whole are forever pressing on to dissolution, severance ; conspicuously succeeding, too, at last in bodily death, when the vital force is finally exhausted by the constant fight. Thus we have to be ever, ever fighting, merely to be what we are ; and the more subsidiary and lowly are the elements of our existence from which we have to wrest submission, the less worthy of our highest essence can we shew ourselves when at war for the time being with them alone. Thus I have to do battle every day, and almost all day, with the purely corporeal base of my existence. I'm not exactly an invalid, but quite uncommonly susceptible ; so that I feel a smart in all those regions which in people of lesser sensibility never enter consciousness at all. Naturally I suppose that this malaise of mine would vanish in great part if my extremely acute sensibility were deflected and agreeably absorbed by an element in life's surroundings such as perhaps might be my due, but is entirely denied me ; I lack the kindly, coaxing entourage to draw my sensitiveness {Empfindlichkeif) towards itself and gently curb it into sentiment (Empfindsamkeit). Lady-friend — be it said with quite a placid smile — what a wretched life I lead ! Indeed I dare not read the account of Humboldt's life, if I'm to reconcile myself to mine ! — Well, that you know ! Neither do I say it to get myself pitied ; merely — I repeat it to you just because you know it j — No longer can I feel any sort of wellbeing save when I've swung myself up to my topmost height, but that height itself is hard to scale, and the harder as it is a height ; judge, then, how relatively brief must be my wellbeing, how lasting the reaction. But you have judged all that before, and know it; then why do I speak of it? It can only be because you know it ; — I need any number of good wishes, and tell it you since I know how your wishes are with me ! — So I'll just go on complaining. — My abode is big and beautiful, but horribly cold. Hitherto I've frozen— now I know it — in Italy alone ; not in the Villa Wesendonck, least of all in the Asyl. Never in my life have I made IOO WAGNER TO MATHILDE WESENDONCK such friends with the stove, as in lovely Venice. The weather is mostly bright and set fair, thank goodness ! — but it's cold here, too, though perhaps colder where you are and in Germany. The gondola merely serves as a hack conveyance now, for pleasure-trips no longer ; for one freezes badly in it, — which comes of the incessant north-wind, which is just what gives such brilliant weather here. What I am getting to miss the sorest, are my rambles over hill and dale : nothing remains for me but the fashionable promenade from the Piazzetta along the Riva to the public gardens, half an hour's walk, with a fearful crush of people always. Venice is a wonder : but that's all it is. — I often long for my dear Sihl valley, for the Kilchberg slopes where I met you also proudly driving. So soon as it turns warmer, and I can make a little pause in my work (my solitary help now !), I think of an outing, first to Verona and the neighbourhood, where the Alps come quite close. It makes a strangely triste impression on me, when, in very clear weather, I can watch from the public gardens the far procession of the Tyrol chain. Then I'm often seized with a yearning of youth that draws me to the mountain-top whereon the tale once built the shining palace with its beautiful princess inside ; 'tis the rock on which Siegfried found Briinnhilde sleeping : the long, flat level, that surrounds me here, looks like nothing so much as resignation. — My relations with the moral world are not inspiring, everything is leathern, tough and dull, precisely as it must be. How my personal lot will shape, God only knows ! A suggestion has been made me from Dresden, to go there with a safe-conduct, surrender my person to the law, and let action be commenced against me ; in consideration whereof, even in the event of conviction, the King's pardon would be a certainty. That would be all very fine for a VENICE LETTERS IOI man who might attain all he needed for life's happiness bysuch a submitting to the most odious chicaneries etc. of a trial; but, good God! what should / gain by it? In return for highly problematic refreshment by a possible few performances of my works, the quite certain annoyance, worry and over-exertion, which are now the more inevitable as my ten-year retirement has made me susceptible in the highest degree to any contact with this atrocious art-boggle I still should have to use as means. With that Dresden suggestion I therefore have not fallen in [see next letter]. To tell the truth, I'm altogether in the air with my works, none of my new ones could I possibly allow to be produced without my personal assistance. The Grand Duke of Baden seems to be the most faithful and energetic of my princes. He sends me word that I'm to reckon for certain on producing the Tristan at Carlsruhe under my personal supervision ; they wish to have it the 6th of September, the Grand Duke's birthday. I should have nothing against it, and the persevering sympathy of this amiable young prince inclines my heart towards him ; so we will see if he carries it through, and whether I — am ready. I still have a great, a serious task before me, arid altho' I hope to keep to it now without disturbance, in no case shall I be able to finish it before June. — Then, if no change occurs, I think of withdrawing from Venice and visiting the mountains of my Switzerland again ; when I may even inquire at your house one day, my friend, whether you still remember me, and if my call is welcome. — Karl Ritter returned on New Year's day, and now comes to see me at 8 every evening again. He has reported to me that he found my wife looking somewhat better. She seems to be doing tolerably, on the whole, and I take care that nothing lacks to her ease. At anyrate the awful beating of her heart appears to have quieted down, though she continues to suffer from sleeplessness, and, now that she has grown a little calmer, complains of increasing oppression in the chest with prolonged paroxysms of coughing— which unfortunately cannot hold out good prospects to me of her mending. The doctor, a tried friend of mine [Pusinelli], makes the prognosis of her illness depend on a lengthy cure in the country next summer ; after such fearful derangement, and particularly in view of the obstinate sleeplessness and consequent malnutrition, we must therefore wait for Nature's decision about this poor tormented soul which finds itself so much a stranger in the world now. You haven't a moment's doubt, dear friend, that my attitude toward the unhappy one is nothing but forbearance and heartily kind consideration ? — Thus I have care upon care — wherever I look the world makes life hard for me, dear child ! Can it then be otherwise, than that I give you worry too ? Yet you worry yourself for simply nothing but my cares, and ah ! indeed you always help me so kind-heartedly. And where you cannot help me, I help myself with you : do you know how ? I heave a great deep sigh until I smile : then to a good book, or — my work. Then all vanishes in an instant, for you are with me then, and I'm with you. — If you'll send me a book from time to time, that you have read, I shall accept it with profoundest thanks. True, I read very little ; but then I read well, and you shall hear about it every time. To yourself I likewise recommend a book: read "Schiller's Life and Works — by Palleske" (only one volume has appeared as yet). Such a piece of reading, the intimate history of a great poet's life and evolution, surely is the most sympathetic thing in the world ; it has uncommonly appealed to myself. Now and again one must obliterate Palleske, though, and keep to the direct com- VENICE LtfTTE&S 10$ fnUmcations of Schiller's male and female friends. It will fascinate you greatly ; ay, in some parts you'll be quiteamazed. In his youth, when connected with the theatre at Mannheim, Schiller stood on a brink whence he was withdrawn by a glorious apparition, which he was lucky to have enter his life thus early, — you must tell me much about that ! And — if I may — I'll write you oftener in return now. Then you shall learn all you would like to know of curious exiled me : all — I hide nothing from you, as you may judge by to-day ! — I'll write Myrrha too, for once, of course : what eyes she'll make ! Only prepare her for my hand in advance. And if Wesendonck wants to hear from me some day, I'll write to him as well : already I have told him that. For today, give him my kindest regards ! — Thus I part from you with the palm ! There where my wreath of thorns rests, my roses shed unwithering scent ; the laurel tempts me not, — wherefore, if I am to decorate myself before the world, I choose the palm ! Peace ! Peace be with us ! — A thousand thousand greetings ! Your R. W.
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 59