[Paris, end of December 1861.] My best and heartiest thanks, my Child ! — * I reply to you with a confession. It will be needless to speak it plainly out : everything in and about you tells me that already you know all. And yet I feel impelled to give you certainty on my side also : — A t last I am fully resigned ! \ t The most delicate of all possible allusions (confirmed by the letter's close) to an event impending, in the Wesendonck household, for the middle of next June. — Tr. One hope I never yet had -given up, and believed that I had earned it hardly ; to find my Asyl once again, be able again to live near you. — One hour of Wiedersehen in Venice was enough, to shatter that last fond dream ! I had at once to recognise that the freedom which is needful to you, and to which you must hold fast for your continuance, you can never maintain so long as I am near you. Only my remoteness can confer on you the power to move free after your own will ; only when you have nothing to purchase, have you no price to concede. I cannot bear, for price of my proximity, to see you cramped and put upon, dependent, ruled. For I cannot requite to you that sacrifice, because my presence then can offer you no more ; and the thought that the poor mite I can be to you in such conditions is bought with all your liberty, with human dignity itself, would make me feel that nearness in itself a torture. Here soothe avails no longer. — I see, you feel and know it yourself ; and how should you not, the first of all ? You have known it long, and earlier than I, who have long remained within my secret heart the incorrigible optimist. — It was that, that alone, which weighed like lead upon my soul in Venice, not my plight, nor my other mischances. Those are indifferent to me in themselves, and have been ever since I knew you. You would scarce believe the utter callousness wherewith I cast the die in all these things : in truth they do not touch my feeling anywhere, or but in passing ; and that with mere relation to the lot which really might be due me, wherein there would be no such thing for me as failure or success. — I adhere to it : to me it is a comfort to know you endowed with tastes, and in a social position, that can confer upon your pain a soft, idyllic character. For my part, I shall merely strive to square my outward life in such a way, that unmolested I may obey my creative inner impulse, retained in all its freshness. I need a settled home for that, above all else : I shall accept it under whatsoever conditions ; for I can bear everything, everything now, since nothing weights me, and Life with all that it involves has no more sense for me at all. Where and how ? — is boundlessly indifferent to me ; I want to work : naught further ! Then for yourself as well can I be something quite apart : I know it, and you know it too ! The grisly Last is over : Venice, the journey back and three ensuing weeks — O horrible ! — now lie behind me ! — So, courage ! go it must ! — I shall send you oft a morsel from my work. How you will open your eyes at my Mastersingers ! Keep your heart secure against Sachs, or you'll fall in love with him! It's an extraordinary work. The old draft afforded little,* next to nothing. Eh, one must have been in Paradise, to discover what may lurk in such a thing ! — Of my life you shall hear the merest necessary — the outermost : inwardly — rest assured of that ! — nothing whatever will occur again, nothing but artistic creation. Consequently you will be losing just nothing at all, but will gain the only thing I have of worth — my works. We shall see each other now and then, though, shall we not ? Void of all wish then : wherefore also, wholly free! — So ! A remarkable letter is this ! You can hardly ^^V^g^r , < ^*' V *ZHt-r% ^C&^^sz eye?-*, (7ZJ-f—%^ o a/ .„ V 3/ Jk^-, . ■U ^Cs& \ t-J ' "'I & • "/ believe what ease it gives me now, to know that you know that I know what you long have known ! And now for a Cobbler's song ! — Ade, my Child ! The Master !
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 125