January i, i860. Lady-friend, I'm still alive ! The most notable news I can give you for the New Year. God knows how I came to flatter myself I should receive a greeting from you to-day ; for our letters are very slow now, and not to be reckoned on. From the date of your letter I have made out to my sorrow that mine to you can not have arrived on Dec. 23 ; consequently I can't expect a greeting in return myself to-day. But I am glad to know that you, and all of you, have reached Rome happily and safely. Your letter shews me that I can very well leave you to fend for yourself now ; you have opened your eyes, and — see. Perhaps you had made an oversight of that before. Now see and behold for me as well : I need someone to do it for me, and no one would I rather let see for me, than you. With me there's something queer about it ; I have repeatedly found it so, and most definitely at last in Italy : I'm uncommonly acutely affected awhile by any considerable effect on my eye, but — it does, not last long. It certainly doesnot cpme, fr#m my eye being insatiable ; but it seems that as sense for observing the world it doesn't suffice me.* Perhaps it is going with me as it went with the eye-loving Goethe when he exclaimed in his Faust : " How grand a spectacle ! but ah ! — no more ! " — Perhaps it may come from my being too decidedly an ear-man ; but I, of all people, pass such long periods entirely without any sort or kind of sustenance for my hearing, that neither would that appear to meet the case. There must be some indescribable inner sense, which is altogether clear and active only when the outward-facing senses are as if a-dream. When I strictly neither see nor hear distinctly any longer, this sense is at its keenest, and shews its function as creative calm : I can call it by no other name. Whether this calm is all one with that plastic repose which you mean, I cannot say ; merely I know that this calm of mine works from within to without, with it I am at the world's centre ; whereas so-called plastic repose seems to me rather the application of outward forms to the allaying of inner unrest. If I feel myself in that inner unrest, no picture, no work of plastic art can take effect on me : it rebounds like a flimsy ball. Then nothing but a gaze beyond, will serve me to see what can calm me. And this, too, is the only gaze that affects me sympathetically in others — this gaze over the world and away. It also is the only one that understands the world; thus Calderon gazed, and who has turned life, and bloom, and beauty, to more wondrous poetry than he? — Goethe in Rome is a very delightful and most important occurrence : what he garnered there, fell to everyone's good ; and thereby he decidedly saved Schiller the need of seeing for himself. The latter could thenceforth make excellent shift, and shape his noblest works ; whereas Goethe pushed his lust of the eye to a hobby, in time, and at last we find him bitten with a mania for collecting coins. He was a whole and utter eye-man. If we let him lead us where are things to be seen, we are sure to be splendidly led. In Rome you've done quite right to go with him ; at his side may a feeling of gracious repose descend on your eyes of a child ! See for me as well ; and let me ever hear such exquisite reflections, as this first time ! — There isn't much to say about myself, child. A man who is running from pillar to post, to get a fitting concerthall to open its doors to him, ought to be no concern of yours in Rome : he oughtn't even to tell you how he feels about it. But give Otto my kindest regards, and tell him that much is soon likely to come to a head ; on the first of May I think of opening my German Opera in the Salle Ventadour. All the best German singers are accepting with enthusiasm ; Frau Ney, [Frau] Mayer-Dustmann (Vienna), Tichatschek, Niemann and others, have sworn themselves under my banner, even with readiness for financial sacrifices. I've a notion I soon shall get everything fixed ; then Tannhäuser and Lohengrin to begin with, and practice of Tristan meanwhile, so that it may be played somewhere about from the ist to the 16th of June. Thus— I must try to help myself, but it doesn't sound like Rome ! — You knew I had a mind to pass an interval in nothing but some outward occupation like this : now I have been compelled to, particularly through the miscarriage of the Carlsruhe Tristan. My whole present scheme is directed at nothing but the possibility of treating myself to my Tristan : after that, I shall most likely let it drop again. I have nothing further in view ; I've quite enough bother with this — and were I Goethe, I'd come to you people in Rome to-day, you may be perfectly sure ! — And now for a beautiful, bright, sunny year ! I feel uncommonly glad at your being in Rome, under Italy's sky! A thousand heartfelt greetings to Otto and the children. With faithful love, Your R. W.
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 99