Paris, May 2, 60. I really can't let May come in, best Child, without sending you another sign-of-life to Rome, as I presume you will not stay there much longer. Could anything withhold my hand from writing you to-day, 'twere only that I have so absolutely nothing right to tell you ; however, you already know that it isn't what I write about to you, that possibly can count, but the mood in which I write it. According to that the topic would be a matter of indifference, were it not that my mood itself, to be exact, is my only topic that can interest you ; and just about that there isn't much to say. How could I be in brilliant mood now ? — Let that pass. — Is my mood quite worthy of your sympathy ? Neither about that can I clear my mind ; but the voice deep down within me says : It should be otherwise ! God knows for what I still exist ! So far as it's a matter of my will, I have no reason to congratulate myself on my endurance : the lucid intervals are far too rare. Perhaps even they will vanish altogether some day ; and yet — I still await them — hold out, wait — and drag my life on in the night ! — Your recollections moved me very much. It is incredible, what devastations of one's being one can bear ; the overplus would prove a lamentable fraction, might it not also be a thing sublimely great. In good moments I venture to flatter myself with the latter : what is greater than complete abandonment of happiness for the whole breadth of existence, and restriction to unique instants? Of a surety, the vulgar alone is broad of life and insistent, the noble but strength of resistance ; affirmation nothing, negation all. — And the artist ? — Poor fool, he's dupe enough of his own consciousness ; but he's very cunningly con- trived to weather the eternal conflict. Yes, to be in perpetual conflict, never to arrive at full inner repose, ever to be hunted, lured, and hurled aside, — indeed that is the life of seething whence his inspiration blossoms like a flower of despair. — Oh, I know it, and you can but feel it with me : who would fain be other than he is ? Well, my mind has grown clear as to the choice which now faces me, but not yet as to how I ought to choose, — nor will that choice, apparently, depend at all on me ; but It will choose, the Brakm, the neuter. And the choice is this : — either to reproduce my works, [ or produce new ones.* The first is tantamount to shouldering all the consequences of the affirmation of life, until they crush one. If I mean to disclose my finished works to the world for virtually the first time, and make it feel all that it owns in them through wholly adequate performances, in that alone I have an undertaking which must utterly consume the very strongest dose of vital force. Then all else is a by-road, every plunge within an act of treason, — then, ho for without, everything outward, subjecting of the world to me, belonging of myself to it alone, letting myself be betrayed, humiliated, racked, destroyed by it, to pass into its conscience. Then will I say to it, as Jesus to His disciples at the Last Supper : " Ye know but the milk of my doctrine ; now shall ye taste of its blood ; come and drink, that I may be within you ! " — t \ There is no text in the Bible exactly corresponding to this allusion (the nearest being Cor. I. iii, 2, and Heb. v, 12-14) ; but in the working-out section of Wagner's own Jesus of Nazareth (1849) we find the following assigned to act iv, which includes the Last Supper: "Jesus, 'Ye have tasted but Or the second : — I renounce all possibility of ever hearing my works, and consequently of disclosing them completely to the world. Tis a sacrifice, and yet — so far as my own pleasure is concerned — perhaps a mere alluring dream ; for the voice distinctly tells me, I shall never reach enjoyment or satisfaction through performance of my works, and there will always be left a secret pang that tortures me the more as I must conceal and deny it, no doubt, not to rank as utter madman. And if I renounced that : — oh, the vision of bliss that dawns on me then ! In the first place, total personal poverty ; not another care for the least possession. A family that adopts me, stills my very modest needs, to which in exchange I transfer all that ever may be mine ; there to do and follow naught beyond the writing of my final works, everything I still have in my head. Then I also leave it calmly to my saving daemon, to summon him who shall disclose my works to the world some day — it being left to my good pleasure to have him presented to me, or to let things pass without a murmur if I thought the man impossible. That — that were my wish, my settled choice — had T a voice in it! — The choice's settlement will indicate which was more needful. If none but / can reproduce my works, it will happen ; I'm certain of that ! — If none but / can write the works I have still in my head, — then that will happen. Now, which would be the harder task? Or — which would be of greater moment? I rather incline to the former. Probably it is more indifferent to the World-spirit, whether a few extra new works of this kind shall be bestowed on the world, than that the essence of this kind of work should be disclosed to the world wholly intelligibly. Oh, it is the milk, not the gall of my doctrine. My death shall give to you the gall, that ye may be steadfast in doing the work that is needful ' (See Eph. iv, 13 and i/f),"^-Prose Works VIII, 308.— Tr. obvious : with the essence of a thing one never reckons quantity ; that's inessential, but the main affair is the inner capacity of the entire kind. If I completely disclose this, I thereby fire the consciousness of other units, who will then be able to multiply the spark. Thus may we also account for the uncommon individuality and multiplicity of the Italian school of painting, the Spanish school of poetry, and so on. Consequently (I believe I am safe in assuming) it is of the greater moment to the World-spirit that I should disclose my finished works to the world through perfect performances ; and on the widest possible terrain, since the few on whom the spark can fall to use are very rare, very dispersed alike in time and space. With new works, on the other hand, in a certain very deep sense — intelligible to the World-spirit alone — I now can but repeat myself, no other essentiality can I reveal any more. So a choice would come off very badly, and it will be impossible to consult my wish thereon. Yet a middle course may be found even here, and a mocking mirage floats before me: namely, that I might perhaps combine the two by turns, or find sweet rest again the battle over, and finish my works in the end. Oh, It is never at a loss for snares ! But I know my daemon ; and there are serious hours when I know everything, no snare can trap me, and yet — I resolve to bear all. To-day I'm writing you in such a mood ; be good to me, respect and love me ! I deserve it — for my sorrows' sake! — Many thousand greetings. Let me hear soon, when I am to begin addressing to Venice. I shall answer Otto presently in Latin, since that has become his pet tongue. And he's right ; what was sung to him yonder in Latin is glorious [Sixtine chapel— Palestrina ?] : I know it well !
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 103