Lucerne, August 24, 59. Whatever can have put it into your head, Child, to see, or wish to see in me a " wise man " ? Am I not the maddest subject one can possibly conceive? Meted with the measure of a wise man, I must appear downright criminal ; and just because I know so much and many a thing, and in particular, that Wisdom is so excellent and wishable. But that, in return, gives me Humour, which helps me over abysses the wisest doesn't even espy. And then, you see, I'm a poet, and — what is far worse — a musician. Now think of my music, with its tenuous, mysteriously-fluent juices, that soak through the subtilest pores of sensation to the very marrow of life ; there to overwhelm all that bears itself the least like prudence or timorous self-preservation ; to flood away all savour of the feint of Personality, and leave but a sublime wistful sigh of avowal of syncope : — then say, how could I ever be a wise man, if I'm entirely at home in nothing but such raving madness ? But I will tell you something. To the temple at Delphi trooped princes and peoples from the uttermost ends of the world, to get their fortunes told them. The priests were the Wise who doled them out those revelations ; but the priests themselves had first to gain them from the Pythia, when she broke into a paroxysmal ecstasy on her tripod of inspiration and wondrously groaned forth the god's own oracles, which the wise priests merely had to transpose into the world's vernacular. — I fancy, whoso once has sat upon that tripod, can become a priest no more: he has stood in the immediate presence of the god. — Furthermore : reflect that Dante met his seldom-andsoft-speaking wise men, not in Paradise, but at a shady halfway place twixt Heaven and Hell. On the cross itself 1 66 WAGNER TO MATHILDE WESENDONCK tho', the Redeemer cried to the poor thief : This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. — You see, you can't get over me : I'm of an arrant cunning, and terrible reserves of mythology are stowed in my head. If you will grant me that, I'll also grant you, that you — are right ; and still more : that it costs me no effort whatever to grant that you're right, for whenever I catch myself in that which you bring so concernedly home to me, I myself am so cross and displeased with myself, that the only thing I wince at then, is the having others rub my self-reproaches into me as if they doubted my already feeling them. And yet, you dear child, 'tis my - final and fairest refreshment, when I learn that all these inner processes of mine are so delicately sensed by another. — Won't you be content with me ? Are you ? — Only remember how rarely you so much as see me now, and how hard it is at those infrequent epochs to be exactly what one might be. Indeed it is difficult now, for So autumn has come down on us quickly ; after a raw and ruined Spring a short-lived blast of summer, and now — . How the days draw in already ! It all is truly like a dream. A few days back the air was even nipping : every good angel seemed flown. A little after-warmth has put in an appearance, though : I enjoy it as a convalescent, yet as one who must still take some care of himself. I'm boundlessly idle, which perhaps may come — as I told my young friend [F. Draeseke] the other day — from the great maturity at which my talent has arrived.* I have received proofs for correction [Tristan score], and stare at them aimlessly. Possibly it is the catarrhal fever to which I last succumbed, that has left me in this state : my nerves will not recover quite, as yet ; perhaps it's the fault of the wind. Vreneli tells me that 4 persons in the hotel are already down with nervous fever. Well, I suppose I am safe against that. — As for the rest, I've arranged my little room quite skilfully, so that you would be surprised at it, if you were to look in. I've even made it possible to find a place for the piano : so it's on its legs once more. — Moreover, I already feel a shade more upright and respectable again : they sent me yesterday my passport vise\ — Further, it's settled that I have no direct vertigo, but merely a sympathetic. That I found out again on Pilatus, where I looked quite calmly down into the deepest chasm at my feet, but was suddenly seized with a frenzy of terror when I looked at my guide, who had gone, like myself, to the brink of the precipice ; thus I really am not so concerned for myself, as for one who depends on me. On the other hand, I never can think without positive faintness of how my negligence was once to blame for the death of that dear little parrot, so touchingly attached to me, which I lost at Zurich before making your acquaintance.* — Children ! Children ! I think the dear God will have mercy upon me one day. — Beg Wesendonck, also, not to be cross with me,t and think kindly yourself of Your R. W. t Apparently for refusing the offer of a loan, as the German editor of the Letters to Otto Wesendonck mentions (without otherwise specifying) a letter of even date to that effect ; possibly the refusal was contained in an enclosure to this letter itself, and may explain the aposiopesis on p. 166. On the 28th Wagner changes his mind, however, in consequence of the failure of his negotiations with the Hartels for sale of the Ring, and writes to Otto that he is prepared " to do a little business with him " ; a proposal willingly accepted by Herr Wesendonck, though with purely friendly intent. — Tr.
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 89