Easter Tuesday [April 26, 1859]. Here's a reliable morning at last ! We must see how the day keeps it up ; what with your note, and the fine weather, it has made a very good beginning. I thank you ! On the whole I'm somewhat fretful and inert. I have really been too long about this work, and feel too keenly that my productive-force is simply feeding on the buds and blossoms which a brief-lived season, like a fertilising thunder-storm, awoke in me. At actual creation I can rightly arrive no more with it ; but the longer it lasts, the more happily attuned must I constantly feel, if the inner store is to come to full wakening ; and such attunements are compellable by no reflection, — like so much else, as far as that goes, in face of the world. True, I do some work each day, but brief and little, just as are the intervals of light ; I often would rather do none, if the horror of a day left thus entirely bare did not goad me on. An odd case is that of a man like me. One doesn't lead a natural life at all ; yet, to make it semi-natural, it would have to be much more artificial ; somewhat as my artwork itself, which also finds no parallel in Nature and Experience, yet receives its new, its higher life precisely through the most consummate application of Art. But imagine it : I have been unable to persuade myself to look through my 2nd act again ever since I've been here ; so that it already lies behind me like a shadowy dream. I feel no craving for it : the element in which alone I still could live, I lack entirely. If I'm to prosper, my art and its reactions on me would have to enfold me to the point of intoxication, of complete forgetfulness of self. But before me, of all men, lies nothing but life ; life, in which I play so unnatural, so doleful a r61e. That really is not as it should be ; and to stay true to my will, wellnigh a species of wilfulness will have to help me in the end. Nothing goes naturally and of itself, with me, not even my artistic creation. To me it is as if I took no genuine pleasure even in the Tristan any more: at the least it ought to have been finished last year. Well, the gods vetoed that ! And now my sole feeling about it, is that it has got to be finished somehow, as otherwise just everything would suddenly come to an end. It's a case of main force. — That sounds pitiful, does it not? — Perhaps the bad weather must bear much of the blame. Perhaps also a share of that attribute we found so unalloyedly developed in Tasso. Still, it always is a last relief to me to be quite candid, and especially to make up my mind to hide nothing from myself; then I take that sad insight also into account, and if after that I still intend a thing, I see that it probably must be. And that, in turn, gives me renewal of courage ; just as it already revives in me now that I've told you this, since I know that I'm even more candid toward you than toward myself. — But— perhaps I ought to leave a thing like that untold you. It might distress you ; and why should you be distressed? Were it not splendid for me, to know you unconcerned in any case? — But, by dint of illusions ? Then all indeed were null and void again : how could your unconcern profit me then ? There's no help fork; one must be able to avow all to oneself, the whole misery of the world and existence, fully and entirely to gain the power to taste the only thing that lifts above it. — That is my whole philosophy, in face of those also who labour to make life endurable by declining to admit its badness, or wilfully shutting their eyes to it. What . they then feign to enjoy, still stays just nothing save the self-sufficiency of their illusion : but the otherwise-minded well knows what he has to rejoice at, namely the overcoming of grief; which alone yields strength, and pride, and — happiness. Best thanks for the brother's letter ; I'm returning it with hearty greetings to Uncle Wesendonck [see p. 128]. May he give marching-orders for Lucerne as soon as possible ! Then we'll have a famous dispute about the war ; which one can do to one's heart's content, since it absolutely doesn't concern one at all, and there one can make absolutely nothing depend on one ; but where it is otherwise — where decision and crisis depend on our innermost will, then that will itself should speak for us, in deed, in mode of dealing. So we'll stick to that ! You scarcely need have troubled Herr " von Heiligen " (German translation of "de Sanctis") : "Gries"* — that's how "Tasso" is called in German. — Am I not quite shameless ? And now I come on you for something more ; only, for Heaven's sake don't breathe a word of it to Wesendonck. — I carry my blankets and bedding about with me — pampered mortal that I am ! The silk coverings look so terribly dirty, however, that I'm ashamed of the chambermaid seeing them. Could you spend a spare moment on trying if you can find the material in Zurich ; they were green, but could be red at a pinch, as the leaf turns in autumn. But I should require a good quantity. If you found something, you should give the order quite secretly (not Heim-ly ! f) to forward the whole piece to me here ; then I would take what I want of it, and settle the account without your further intervention. t For the pun (heimlicK) see p. 72. — Tr. For the rest, you'll find everything spruce here. The big marquee [" Marquise "—apparently an awning] is ready J Only the SUn for it to protect from is missing. Stay, though : we have some to-day, so perhaps things will go somewhat better. About that one may rightly say — : Heaven grant it ! And now my felicitation to the " Others " and " Rockly's " * — and for an absolute close something new and silky t Animated. from Your
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 70