Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt Volume II Part 11

Perfect performances, which in the long run could alone console me, I cannot achieve. The rehearsals are too few, and everything is done in too businesslike a manner. Although the pieces from "Lohengrin" were favourably received, I am sorry that I have given them. My annoyance at being compelled to produce such trifling specimens of my work and to have my whole being judged thereby is too great. I also hate like poison to have to take a single step in order to gain the favour of that wretched pack of journalists. They continue abusing me to their heart's delight, and the only thing that surprises me is that the public have not so far allowed themselves to be misled. In short, I would have nothing to do with these contemptible matters even if I happened to please the people.

Let me finish my "Nibelungen;" that is all I desire. If my n.o.ble contemporaries will not help me to that, they may go to the devil, with all their honour and glory. Through London I have got into awful arrears with my work; only yesterday was I able to finish the instrumentation of the first act of the "Valkyie."

Body and soul are weighed down as by a load of lead. My chief wish for this year--to begin "Young Siegfried" at once after my return at Seelisberg--I shall have to give up, for it is very unlikely that I shall get beyond the second act of the "Valkyrie"

here. Such as I am, I want a soft, clinging element around me, in order to feel gladly inclined for work. This eternal need of self-condensation for the purpose of self-defence supplies me with obstinacy and contempt, but not with the love of expansion and production.

Klindworth has probably written to you; at least he was startled when I recently conveyed your reminder to him. He was ill, and is not doing well here, but how am I to help him? Blackguardism, obstinacy, and religiously nursed stupidity are here protected with iron walls; only a blackguard and a Jew can succeed here.

Upon the whole, you were right in retiring to Weimar; as much solitude as possible, that alone can save us.

The Hartels sent me the bill of exchange yesterday; many thanks.

Cannot B. do the pianoforte arrangement?

He had only just begun the "Rhinegold," when I took the score away from him to send it to you. As soon as the copy at Dresden has been finished, he is to have it for the completion of the pianoforte arrangement; and after that, if you wish it, it is to be sent to you. Shall we see each other this year, perhaps on your return from Hungary? That would be something like it!

Perhaps at that time I should have recovered my voice, which here has disappeared entirely.

Farewell, dearest friend. Patience--that is all that remains to us. Remember me to all at Altenburg. Much luck to your ma.s.s!

Farewell, dear, dear Franz.

184.

Klindworth has just played your great sonata to me.

We pa.s.sed the day alone together; he dined with me, and after dinner I made him play. Dearest Franz, you were with me; the sonata is beautiful beyond anything, grand and sweet, deep and n.o.ble, sublime as you are yourself. It moved me most deeply, and the London misery was forgotten all at once. More I cannot say, not just after having heard it, but of what I say I am as full as man can be. Once more, you were with me! Ah, could you soon be with me wholly and bodily, then we might support life beautifully.

Klindworth astonished me by his playing; no lesser man could have ventured to play your work to me for the first time. He is worthy of you. Surely, surely, it was beautiful.

Good-night. Many thanks for this pleasure vouchsafed to me at last.

Your

R. W.

LONDON, April 5th, 8:30 evening.

185.

DEAREST RICHARD,

I had nothing to tell you that was pleasant or important, and therefore did not write to you for a long time. During these last weeks I have spun myself into my ma.s.s, and yesterday at last I got it done. I do not know how it will sound, but may say that I have PRAYED it rather than COMPOSED it. On my return from Hungary in September, I shall bring you the ma.s.s and my symphonic bubbles and troubles, half of which will by that time be in print. If my scores should bore you, that will not prevent me from deriving sweetest enjoyment from your creations, and you must not refuse me the favour of singing the whole "Rhinegold" and "Valkyrie" to me. In the meanwhile all other musical things appear to me "stupid stuff."

How do you feel in London?

Troublesome though it may be, one must try to bear the inevitable and immutable; to take pleasure in it would be a lie.

The English edition of Philistinism is not a whit pleasanter than the German, and the chasm between the public and ourselves is equally wide everywhere.

How, in our wretched conditions, could enthusiasm, love, and art have their true effect?

"Patience and resignation" is our device, and to it we sing

[Here, Liszt ill.u.s.trates with a music score excerpt]

Pardon me for being your hollow echo, and let us endure what cannot be cured.

I am very grateful to you for being so kind to Klindworth. In a few days his cousin will come to London and bring you news of me, as she has spent the whole winter at Weymar. Your letter about the sonata has highly delighted me, and you must excuse me for not having thanked you at once. You are often so near to me that I almost forget writing to you, and I am seldom at the right temperature for correspondence. Well, in September I shall be with you; and (D.V.) we will have some bright, comforting days together.

Your

F. L.

WEYMAR, May 2nd, 1855.

186.

DEAR POET, DEAR FRIEND,

Our hearts are with you, and suffer with you; that you know, and cannot be ignorant of.

Let us hear from you soon, and forgive me if, in the midst of the preoccupations of your heart and of your grief, I ask you for a trifle; but it will cost you so little to grant it me, and you will give such great, such very great, pleasure by it. It is the fate of poets and women sometimes to give what they have not themselves--I mean happiness. Take a piece of paper and write on it the following verses, which, as you know, appear to me written with the purest blood of my veins:-

"Nicht Gut, nicht Gold, noch gottliche Pracht; nicht Haus, nicht Hof, nicht herrischer Prunk, nicht truber Vertrage trugender Bund, noch heuchelnder Sitte hartes Gesetz: selig in l.u.s.t und Leid la.s.st--die Liebe nur sein!--" Sign this with your name, your great name, enclose it in an envelope, address it to me, and put it in the post. Forgive me for asking you this small thing--small in its material aspect, but great as the world in its significance.

I press your two hands with mine, dear, dear, great man.

CAROLYNE.

May 7th, 1855.

187.

Cordial thanks, dearest Franz, for your kind note, which I had been expecting a long time. The hope which you open to me of seeing you in September is my only light in the night of this sad year. I live here like one of the lost souls in h.e.l.l. I never thought that I could sink again so low. The misery I feel in having to live in these disgusting surroundings is beyond description, and I now realise that it was a sin, a crime, to accept this invitation to London, which in the luckiest case must have led me far away from my real path. I need not expatiate to you upon my actual situation. It is the consistent outgrowth of the greatest inconsistency I ever committed. I am compelled to conduct an English concert programme right down to the end; that says everything. I have got into the middle of a slough of conventionalities and customs, in which I stick up to the ears, without being able to lead into it the least drop of pure water for my recreation. "Sir, we are not accustomed to this"--that is the eternal echo I hear. Neither can the orchestra recompense me.

It consists almost exclusively of Englishmen, that is clever machines which cannot be got into the right swing; handicraft and business kill everything. Then there is the public, which, I am a.s.sured, is very favourably inclined towards me, but can never be got out of itself, which accepts the most emotional and the most tedious things without ever showing that it has received a real impression. And, in addition to this, the ridiculous Mendelssohn wors.h.i.+p!

And even if all this were better than it is, what business have I with such concerts? I am not fit for them. It is quite a different thing if I conduct one of Beethoven's symphonies before a few friends, but to be a regular concert conductor, before whom they place the scores of concert pieces, etc., so that he may beat the time to them--that, I feel, is the deepest disgrace.

This thoroughly inappropriate character of my position led me to the resolution of sending in my resignation after the fourth concert. But of course I was talked out of it, and especially my regard for my wife, who would have heard of this sudden resignation and of all that would have been written about it with great grief, determined me to hold out till the last concert. The infernal torture this is to me I cannot express. All my pleasure in my work is disappearing more and more. I had made up my mind to finish the score of the "Valkyrie" during the four months here, but that is out of the question. I shall not even finish the second act, in so terribly dispiriting a manner does this false position act upon me. In July I wanted to begin "Young Siegfried" at Seelisberg, on the lake of Lucerne, but now I think of delaying that beginning till next spring. This dislike of work is the worst feature of all. I feel as if with it eternal night were closing around me, for what have I still to do in this world if I cannot do my work?

Through this h.e.l.l my study of Dante, to which I could not settle down before, has accompanied me. I have pa.s.sed through his Inferno, and am now at the gate of Purgatory. Really I am in need of this purgatory; for if I consider it rightly, I was brought to London by a really sinful degree of thoughtlessness, which now I have to repent with fervour. I must, I must be resigned; my experience long ago convinced me of the necessity of resignation in the widest sense of the word, and I must now subdue altogether this terrible, wild desire of life, which again and again dims my vision and throws me into a chaos of contradictions. I must hope that I may at some future time rise from purgatory to paradise; the fresh air of my Seelisberg will perhaps help me to this. I do not deny that I should like to meet Beatrice there.

In all other respects things are going badly and crookedly. Poor Klindworth has been ill all along, and the fact that I could undertake nothing with him has deprived me of a great pleasure.

He is better now, but not yet allowed to take a walk with me.