Paris, Nov. 29, 59.* What great joy you again have given me, Lady-friend ! Believe me, if I had to recognise myself in none but the mirror held up to me by the world and all my friends therein, I soon should have to turn away with dread of any looking back. Nor can I be quite open and true with any one of them : there always remain spots and b^ind places, which I know not how to fill up. But if You answer me for once, how splendid I then appear ! Everything, including myself, then seems to me noble : I know that I'm safe. Children, that we are three, is really something wonderfully grand ! It is incomparable, my and your greatest triumph ! We stand inconceivably high above mankind, inconceivably high ! The noblest had to come true for once : and the true is so incomprehensible because so wholly for itself. Let us revel in this high good-fortune : it has no uses, and is here for naught — it can but be enjoyed, and but by those who are it. — Now be you finely welcomed to French soil : | herewith the poet of the Nibelungen steps forth to meet you, and stretches out his hand. I felicitate you joyfully on your roving to Italy ; you go to meet a benefit that I am not to taste, and which I therefore wish you doubly. Enjoy the balmy heaven, the poetic land, the living past, for me as well, and be you thereby twice made glad ! How inexpressibly gladly would I be with you both ! — Nothing remains for me now, but to make one final energetic effort to rid myself of an eternal cumbrance of my t Evidently taking the Marseilles route to Rome ; see letter of Dec. 12 to Otto.— Tr. life for good and all. Ruined and devastated as my relations to life are, yet I have come to see that much therein may shape itself endurably and acceptably if only I can get myself the needful outer means to dispose at all times of my mode of life, my projects, doings and leavings-undone, according to my need and judgment, without being forever arrested by that single point which nowadays has power over freedom, and whose settlement removes all scruples as to what we do or leave undone. I now have learnt more forcibly than ever — tho' strictly it was always so — that I can bear each failure, every undeception, each closing of all prospect, all, all, with great, contemptuous indifference ; but those said troubles make me furiously impatient. Disdain everything, let nothing turn me from the inner fount, renounce all recognition, all success, even the possibility of producing my own works myself — all this I can ; but with gnashing of teeth to have to bruise my feet against the clog that Fate has cast between my legs upon their quiet journey — against that — I can't help it — I am and remain most excessively sensitive ; and as I'm what I am, and nothing can alter me in that respect — so long as I'm able to hold out at all — I now am staking everything, in uttermost impatience, on clearing my path of this clog once for all * Luckily I can pretend to myself that it completely suits my present inner situation, to direct my attention exclusively outward awhile. I expect you won't allow yourself to be altogether duped thereby ; and if you were to suppose I might unhesitatingly prefer to cultivate my inner concentration in some agreeable retirement, amid congenial surroundings, I96 WAGNER TO MATHILDE WESENDONCK as for instance with you two, and — finally indifferent toward their outer fortunes — devote myself to the continual creation of new works : if you were to suppose this, let me tell you, you would be perfectly right (tho* it must not go beyond ourselves, of course). But I believe, as said, it will now become possible to delude myself into the other course ; and that's assisted very much, nay, wellnigh determined, by my latest relations with my whole world of so-called friends in Germany. It really is incredible, how things stand there ; so incredible that I gladly withhold it from you, since you hardly could believe it in the end. Thus I'm convinced, e.g., that you would tax me with exaggeration and misconception if I tried to make it plain to you how truly hostilely, or at least entirely unconscientiously, this Ed. Devrient has behaved to me ; so I'll merely tell you that I long had been prepared for it, and wasn't at all surprised when at last I found it out. I gladly excuse him, however : everybody has his hobby-horse, and his is a normal well-regulated theatrical institute, without digressions into a domain not to be trodden in the daily round. In this sense he was instinctively against my work from the first, and only the young Grand Duchess's enthusiastic wish propelled him on — head-shaking and half sulky all the way. Well, he has triumphed now ; he openly avers that I've reached the point of the impossible. — Whether the young enthusiastic woman's-heart will not retire into itself, cowed by the experienced, calculating man — the " wise man," if you will— what do you say ? I'm certain the young Grand Duke will. — But look you, child, it is this and its like that stirs my old pugnacity again, a little : I'm foolish, but — the very fact that I live is a folly; you cannot but admit it. The Impossible itself might tempt me; and my committing myself here to Paris, e.g., long seemed to me the last im- possibility of all. Yet I have a quite peculiar gauge for the Impossible, and that points inwards : whether I carry it through, I shall learn from nothing save my mood, my inclination to pursue ; and I therefore shall deem that impossible for which I lose all zest at last. That may easily occur ; disgust has a terrible sway with me, and once it plainly shews itself, it is invincible ; wherefore I shall not strive against it, and to it belongs the judgment of what may be possible to me. Often do I detect it, and it casts me down for wretched days : then it gets stilled again by this or that surprising advance, sympathy, budding intelligence, where I never had hoped for them. Then Maya weaves its veil opaque once more, a lightning instant of full rayed-out truth confronts me ; hindrances incite, risks enflame — and — we shall see which keeps the field, disgust, or — lust of battle ? — I cannot yet decide. But were I one of those fortunates to whom Fate gave gold and silver also when it gave them pride and talent, my fondest wish would bear me now to you in Rome for 2 fair months ; I know it. Now go you children well alone: I'll see how I can bend my fate, then some day I'll come too. Good luck accompany you ! A thousand heartfelt wishes ! — R. W.
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 97