April 15. Child, the weather is abominable. For two days work has been suspended ; the brain stubbornly refuses its service. — What's to be done? — I snatched at the Tasso to-day, and read it through right off. Indeed it is a unique poem, and I know absolutely nothing to compare with it. How could Goethe have ever written it ! — Who is in the right here? who in the wrong? Each sees as he sees, and cannot see otherwise ; what seems to the one a gnat, to the other is a giant. In the end, however, our heart is captured by the one who suffers most, and a voice tells us also that he looks the deepest. Just because he sees in each case every case, does the smallest seem to him so huge, and his sorrow, shews us what is really in a case if one but probes it to its deepest bottom. The mere fact of this process being so terribly swift with the poet, since his eye takes everything in at a glance, makes him unintelligible to the others. — But the mistress of Sorrow is manifestly the Princess. For him who looks deep enough, there virtually is but one antithesis here, that between Tasso and the Princess : Tasso and Antonio are lesser contrasts, and their conflict interests the thinker less, since it admits of adjustment. Antonio will never understand Tasso, and only occasionally — by way of relaxation — will the latter hold the former worth the pains of understanding. Everything at stake between these two men is altogether inessential, simply a means of bringing Sorrow into play for Tasso so soon as ever he vehemently desires a thing. If we look beyond the piece, however, nothing remains to us but the Princess and Tasso : how will these two antitheses get balanced? As it here is a question of suffering, the lady has the advantage ; will Tasso learn of her? With his vehemence, I should rather fear madness for him. That the poet has foretokened marvellously. — This set me also thinking, tho', that it was rash of me to publish the Tristan thus early. Between a poem altogether built for music and a purely poetic stage-play the difference in plan and execution must be so fundamental, that, if the former is viewed with the same eye as the latter, its true import must stay almost entirely lost, — that is, until completed by its music. Recall what I wrote in the letter on Liszt {Prose Works ui.\ apropos of Berlioz' Romeo and Juliet scene, about the binding difference here. It is precisely those many little touches whereby the poet must bring his ideal object quite close to the common experience of life that the musician leaves out, laying hand instead on the infinite detail of music, thereby to present the ideally distant object convincingly to men's emotional experience. But that makes an immense alteration in the form of the poetic work itself. Without the mass of small, nay, trifling details from the common wont of life, from politics, society, eh, the home and its needs, which Goethe employs in his Tasso, he would be unable to clothe his idea in pure-poetic guise at all. Here is the point, moreover, where everyone is with him, where each may fasten on a notion, an experience, and at last feels so at home that he can be imperceptibly led to what the poet really wills. Naturally, it always ends with each man's being left exactly where his feet will carry him no farther ; still, each has an understanding of it after his kind. And the same thing happens when the music is furnished to my work : then melodic phrases enter into play and inter-play, engross and incite ; one holds to this theme, another to that: they hear and guess, and provided they're able, they also grasp the object, the idea, at last. But without the music, that handle still lacks ; unless we're to suppose a reader so gifted as to feel out the convincing trend from the uncommonly simplified plot itself. Now you may imagine how I feel when bad weather and a heavy head pull me up in my music ! If I knew that Wesendonck were back and had no objection, I would come to you tomorrow, if the weather continues so bad. Just fancy : I am still without my box of music and ruled paper ! The military escort have detained it in Italy [see pp. 128, 136]. If I cannot work again tomorrow, I would far rather be up and about ; even the railroad would give me a chance then. So we'll arrange it so : if Wesendonck isn't back yet, you will telegraph to me at once ; if I receive no telegram in the forenoon, and the weather remains equally bad, I will telegraph him, begging him at the same time to send the coup6 to the station at 9 P.M. (if that is not asking too much). Then we'll see how we can kill the bad weather together on Sunday. — Will that suit you? Kindest regards. R. W. If you were able to send me a telegram time enough, I should prefer to leave here in the morning (arriving at Zurich 2.30), I'm so afraid of my bad-weather idleness ! But the telegram would have to be here by 9 A.M.
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 68