■ For the 23rd December, i860. I find I have still a sheet left of my colour,* Lady-friend ; so it shall bear you my felicitation on your birthday. What shall I wish, what offer you ? An utmost toilsome, unresting existence makes — Rest appear to me the wishful thing ; I long for it myself so yearningly, that I needs must wish it others too, especially my Dearest, as sole and highest good. It is so difficult to win to : in whom it was not born, he hardly ever will acquire it, and nothing but a total crushing of his native character can bring him this victor'sprize. Who remains in life like this, staking his nature again and again on this life, may have grown very tranquil — almost completely so, in fact — as regards much in its broader issues ; but the little everyday affairs of life will ever sting him, make him lose all patience and repose. How curiously it fares with me ! All that sets the world in motion, almost without an exception, leaves me cold and unmoved. Fame has no sway at all, with me ; Profit only in so far as I may need it to keep me independent : of taking any serious step for either, I never could dream. To prove my point is also quite indifferent to me since I've learnt how unutterably few men are capable of so much as understanding their fellows. Further, my very natural and pardonable craving, to witness a fully adequate representation of each of my works, has very much cooled down of late, and particularly in this last year ; renewed contact with bandsmen, singers, and so on, has again wrung many a sigh from me, and fed my resignation with strong food on this side too. More and more have I to mark how measurelessly far I've strayed from this — in our modern life the quite invariable — basis of even my own art-fashionings, and willingly do I admit that if I suddenly cast a glance now on my Nibelungen or the Tristan, I startle as if from a dream, and ask myself: "Where wast thou? — Thou wast dreaming ! Set wide thine eyes and see : lo ! this is the reality."— Yes, I will not deny it, I strictly hold my later works for downright inexecutable. And if the inner prompting ne'ertheless revives, to realise a possibility e'en here, in turn that's only possible through letting my poor brain roam off again into the dream-world ; where untold, neverprecedented aids arise, and I trust myself with the enormous power to draw them to me. Faced with an unbroken series of experiences, however, of incredible weakness and superficiality in all the persons and relations whereon the possibility of my assumptions had reposed, here also Resignation gains more and more predominance, and lends me that passivity which turns with terror from a useless strife. I have come to thinking very little of it now — So, if aught invigorates me for the present Tannhäuser affair, it is strictly nothing but my nature's inextirpable propensity to rouse itself beneath the influence of artistic aims. With difficulty can I force myself the whole day long, to take an interest in the thing ; but once I'm at rehearsal, the immediateness of art resumes its hold on me : I squander myself and my forces — and literally for a thing that leaves me quite indifferent. — In truth that is my case ! — Yet see ! — how the whole breadth of heaven parts this from the view which not alone the world, but all my own acquaintances, nay, e'en my most devoted friend, still takes of me. I can truthfully say that it is almost solely this mad but ineradicable opinion of everybody who draws near me, that gives me pain : I may preach, waste anger, argument, or indignation, — I'm ever answered by the smile of pity for a momentary loss of temper ! If people then could only plumb my silence, when, pale and outwardly indifferent, I suddenly break off, withdraw into my shell! O my child ; where am I then to find my only, only solace? — .Once I did find the heart and soul that wholly understood me in such moments, and held me dear because it understood, and knew it understood me so ! See, to this soul do I flee then, let sink my limbs as one fatigued to death, and dip my head in the soft aether of its kindly thought. All that I lived through once, the untold emotions, cares and sorrows of that past, dissolve as from a storm-cloud to a quickening dew, which laves my burning temples ; there do I feel refreshment and at last repose, sweet rest : I am beloved — am known ! — And that repose, I lay it at your feet ! In gracious consciousness of all you are to me — the angel of my calm, the guardian of my life — may you also find the noble fount to steep the arid paths of your existence ! Share you my calm, accept it from me whole to-day, as I enjoy it at this instant when I sink my soul entire in yours ! My wish this, this my offering! R. W.
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 113