In January 1854, German composer Richard Wagner was living in exile in Zürich, Switzerland. He had fled his native Germany five years earlier, after playing an active role in the Dresden Uprising. Cut off from his homeland and the German musical world, and his marriage to actress Minna Planer in turmoil, Wagner was overcome by loneliness and despair. His financial situation was unstable, with no regular income and chronic debts, and his attempts to sell the rights to his operas had failed. For money, he was mostly dependent on loans and the generosity of others. On the artistic front, Wagner was frustrated by his inability to oversee performances of his works in Germany. He had heard of the poor execution of his opera Lohengrin (1850) in Leipzig, but hoped the "failure" could still be repaired. Unable to do much from afar —he could not return to Germany until 1862— he devoted himself to composing his famous, four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. While he had just completed the first draft of Das Rheingold (the first opera of the cycle), it would still take another twenty years, until 1874, before he finished the whole Nibelungen (the remaining operas being Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung).
It was against this background that a depressed and desperate Wagner reached out to Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. At that time, he regarded Liszt as his only true friend— the one person who really understood him. Liszt, who was two years older, always supported Wagner, both as a champion of his music (even conducting his works when no one else would) and through generous financial aid. On 15 January 1854, Wagner wrote to Liszt in utter despair over his professional and financial circumstances, pleading for his friend's help (see the letter below). While he would remain in debt, Wagner's situation improved later that year— at least spiritually. He was introduced to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, his The World as Will and Representation, which completely changed the composer's worldview. He later called it the most important event of his life. It was through Schopenhauer's work that Wagner conceived the idea for his opera Tristan und Isolde, one of his most beloved works. After putting Nibelungen on hold in 1857, Wagner started working on Tristan und Isolde and finished it in 1859. He would resume his Nibelungen in 1869 and complete it five years later.
Incidentally, Wagner was known to suffer from extreme mood swings, and today would likely be diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
DEAREST FRIEND,The "Rhinegold" is done, but I also am done for. Latterly I had intentionally dulled my feeling by means of work, and avoided every opportunity of writing to you before its completion. Today is the first forenoon when no pretext prevents me any longer from letting the long-nourished and pent-up grief break forth. Let it break forth, then. I can restrain it no longer.In addition to your very kindly notice of the Leipzig "Lohengrin," I also received that of the "Deutsche Allgemeine" Zeitung, and discover in it the scornful punishment inflicted upon me for the crime I committed against my being and my inmost conscience when, two years ago, I became unfaithful to my rightful determination and consented to the performance of my operas. Alas! how pure and consistent with myself was I when I thought only of you and Weimar, ignored all other theatres, and entirely relinquished the hope of any further success.Well, that is over now. I have abandoned my purpose, my pride has vanished, and I am reduced to humbly bending my neck under the yoke of Jews and Philistines.But the infamous part is that by betraying the noblest thing in my possession I have not even secured the prize which was to be the equivalent. I remain, after all, the beggar I was before.Dearest Franz, none of my latter years has passed without bringing me at least once to the verge of the resolution to put an end to my life. Everything seems so waste, so lost! Dearest friend, art with me, after all, is a pure stop-gap, nothing else, a stop-gap in the literal sense of the word. I have to stop the gap by its means in order to live at all. It is therefore with genuine despair that I always resume art; if I am to do this, if I am to dive into the waves of artistic fancy in order to find contentment in a world of imagination, my fancy should at least be buoyed up, my imagination supported. I cannot live like a dog; I cannot sleep on straw and drink bad whisky. I must be coaxed in one way or another if my mind is to accomplish the terribly difficult task of creating a non-existing world. Well, when I resumed the plan of the "Nibelungen" and its actual execution, many things had to co-operate in order to produce in me the necessary, luxurious art-mood. I had to adopt a better style of life than before; the success of "Tannhauser" [1845], which I had surrendered solely in this hope, was to assist me. I made my domestic arrangements on a new scale; I wasted (good Lord, wasted!) money on one or the other requirement of luxury. Your visit in the summer, your example, everything, tempted me to a forcibly cheerful deception, or rather desire of deception, as to my circumstances. My income seemed to me an infallible thing. But after my return from Paris my situation again became precarious; the expected orders for my operas, and especially for "Lohengrin," did not come in; and as the year approaches its close I realise that I shall want much, very much, money in order to live in my nest a little longer. I begin to feel anxious. I write to you about the sale of my rights to the Hartels [music publisher Breitkopf & Härtel]; that comes to nothing. I write to Berlin to my theatrical agent there. He gives me hopes of a good purchaser, whom I refer to the first performance of "Lohengrin" at Leipzig. Well, this has taken place, and now my agent writes that after such a success he has found it impossible to induce the purchaser to conclude the bargain, willing as he had previously been.Confess that this is something like a situation. And all this torture, and trouble, and care about a life which I hate, which I curse! And, in addition to this, I appear ridiculous before my visitors, and taste the delightful sensation of having surrendered the noblest work of my life so far to the predetermined stupidity of our theatrical mob and to the laughter of the Philistine.Lord, how must I appear to myself? I wish that at least I had the satisfaction that some one knew how I appear to myself.Listen, my Franz; you must help me! I am in a bad, a very bad, way. If I am to regain the faculty of holding out (this word means much to me), something thorough must be done in the direction of prostituting my art which I have once taken, otherwise all is over with me. Have you thought of Berlin again? Something must be done there if all is not to come to a stop.Before all, I must have money. The Hartels have been very liberal, but what is the good of hundreds where thousands are needed? If the Berlin purchase had come to something, I might at least have used the offer in order to prove to a man of business here that I possessed "capital," and to induce him to lend me the necessary sum for three years, paying back one-third every year. But this hope also has vanished. No one will undertake such an affair unless he has personal confidence in my future (?) successes. Such a man, dearest Franz, you must find for me. Once more, I want from 3,000 to 4,000 thalers in order to find perfect rest and equipoise. That much my operas may well bring me in in three years IN CASE something real is done for "Lohengrin," so as to save it. I am willing to lease my rights to the lender; my rights in "Tannhauser" and "Lohengrin" shall be secured to him in any way he thinks desirable or necessary. If I am not worthy of such a service, then you must own that I am in a bad way, and all has been a mistake! Help me over this, and I will undertake once more to hold out.Dear friend, do not be angry. I have a claim on you as on my creator. You are the creator of the person I am now; I live through you: it is no exaggeration. Take care of your creation. I call this a duty which you have towards me.The only thing I want is money; that at least one ought to be able to get. Love I abandon, and art!Well, the "Rhinegold" is ready, readier than I ever thought it would be. I went to this music with so much faith, so much joy; and with a true fury of despair I continued, and have at last finished it. Alas! the need of gold held me too in its net. Believe me, no one ever has composed in this manner; my music, it seems to me, must be terrible; it is a slough of horrors and sublimities.I shall soon make a clean copy, black on white, and that will probably be the end of it; or shall I give permission to have this also performed at Leipzig for twenty louis d'or? I cannot write more to you today. You are the only person to whom I could tell such a thing; no one else has an idea of it, least of all the people near me.Do not think that the news of Leipzig has made me suddenly desperate. I anticipated this, and knew everything beforehand. I can also imagine that the Leipzig failure may still be repaired, that "it is not as bad as we think," and much more to the same effect. It may be, but let me see evidence. I have no faith, and only one hope: sleep, sleep, so profound, so profound, that all sensation of the pain of living ceases. That sleep at least is within my reach; it is not so difficult to get.Good heavens, I give you bad blood as well! Why did you ever come across me?The present of the Princess [Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a Polish noblewoman who had a relationship with Liszt] caused me a smile,—a smile over which I could shed tears. I shall write to her when I have lived through a few more days; then I shall also send you my portrait, with a motto, which might make you feel awkward after all. How are you? Burn this letter: it is godless; but I too am godless. Be you God's saint, for in you alone I still have faith. Yea! yea! and once more yea!YourR. W.January 15th, 1854Something must be done in London; I will even go to America to satisfy my future creditor; this too I offer, so that I may finish my "Nibelungen."
Notes:
-The remark in the above letter about Jews and Philistines shows Wagner's antisemitic attitude, by then already deeply ingrained. His antisemitic views are on full diplay in his 1850 essay Das Judenthum in der Musik (Jewishness in Music).
-In 1870, Wagner married Liszt's daughter Cosima and thus became Liszt's son-in-law, which made the relationship between the two composers more complex.
Source letter: Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 (1889), by Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt; Francis Hueffer (translator)
Via: Project Gutenberg
Image: Portrait of Richard Wagner by Cäsar Willich, circa 1862 (left); Portrait of Ferenc Liszt (Franz Liszt) by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, 1856
Source: Wikimedia Commons
0 comments