This is the first of what we hope will be a series, eventually producing a full audiobook of the Wagner/Liszt letters. If it's of interest, or not, please let us know. We have uploaded using both Bloggers tools and on Youtube. The video below should be without adverts- we cannot say the same of youtube. However, if you have any difficulty few the first, the youtube version should be available. Transcript below.
In December eighteen fifty four, Richard Wagner was living in exile in Zurich. He had fled Germany five years earlier, after taking part in the Dresden uprising of eighteen forty nine, which is why he calls this the tenth year of his Hegira, borrowing the word for the Prophet’s flight from Mecca.
That autumn, the poet Georg Herwegh had introduced him to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Long ignored by the German universities, Schopenhauer had recently been championed in an English journal, the Westminster Review, by the critic John Oxenford. Wagner’s encounter with his thought would shape everything that followed.
The letter is written to Franz Liszt, his closest friend and greatest supporter, then music director at Weimar. Liszt had just published an essay on The Flying Dutchman, and was working on his own Faust Symphony. The Princess mentioned is Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, Liszt’s companion, and "M" is most likely her daughter, Marie. Raff is the composer Joachim Raff, Liszt’s assistant, and no uncritical admirer of Wagner.
Wagner was deep in composing The Ring. But here, for the first time, he names the work that would interrupt it: Tristan and Isolde. He imagined the Ring performed by eighteen fifty eight. In the event, Tristan would not reach the stage until eighteen sixty five, and the complete Ring not until eighteen seventy six.
And now, to the letter it self:
ZURICH, December sixteenth, eighteen fifty four.
DEAR FRANZ,
I begin to find out more and more that you are in reality a great philosopher, while I appear to myself a hare-brained fellow. Apart from slowly progressing with my music, I have of late occupied myself exclusively with a man who has come like a gift from heaven, although only a literary one, into my solitude. This is Arthur Schopenhauer, the greatest philosopher since Kant, whose thoughts, as he himself expresses it, he has thought out to the end. The German professors ignored him very prudently for forty years; but recently, to the disgrace of Germany, he has been discovered by an English critic. All the Hegels, etc., are charlatans by the side of him. His chief idea, the final negation of the desire of life, is terribly serious, but it shows the only salvation possible. To me of course that thought was not new, and it can indeed be conceived by no one in whom it did not pre-exist, but this philosopher was the first to place it clearly before me. If I think of the storm of my heart, the terrible tenacity with which, against my desire, it used to cling to the hope of life, and if even now I feel this hurricane within me, I have at least found a quietus which in wakeful nights helps me to sleep. This is the genuine, ardent longing for death, for absolute unconsciousness, total non-existence; freedom from all dreams is our only final salvation.
In this I have discovered a curious coincidence with your thoughts; and although you express them differently, being religious, I know that you mean exactly the same thing. How profound you are! In your article about the "Dutchman" you have struck me with the force of lightning. While I read Schopenhauer I was with you, only you did not know it. In this manner I ripen more and more. I only play with art to pass the time. In what manner I try to amuse myself you will see from the enclosed sheet.
For the sake of that most beautiful of my life-dreams, "Young Siegfried," I shall have to finish the "Nibelungen" pieces after all; the "Valkyrie" has taken so much out of me that I must indulge in this pleasure; I have got as far as the second half of the last act. The whole will not be finished till eighteen fifty six; and in eighteen fifty eight, the tenth year of my Hegira, the performance may take place, if at all. As I have never in life felt the real bliss of love, I must erect a monument to the most beautiful of all my dreams, in which, from beginning to end, that love shall be thoroughly satiated. I have in my head "Tristan and Isolde," the simplest but most full-blooded musical conception; with the "black flag" which floats at the end of it I shall cover myself to die.
When you have had enough of "Rhinegold," send it to Chorusmaster Fischer at Dresden, instructing him in my name to give it to the copyist Wölfel, so that he may finish the copy which he has begun. Your cheering words about the "Rhinegold" were splendid, and it has really turned out well. I hope there will be enough counterpoint in it to please Raff. My anxiety as to this troubles me very much.
Is "M" ill? How can I do anything to help her? She should come in the summer to Seelisberg, on the lake of Lucerne. It is the dearest discovery I have made in Switzerland; up there all is so joyful, so beautiful, that I long to return, to die there.
There we must meet next summer; I mean to write "Young Siegfried" there, and you must assist me. Perhaps I shall assist you too. How full my heart is when I think of it! Many thanks to the Princess; at her desire, I send the enclosed autograph. Nothing about business! What do we care about such miserable things? When shall I see your symphonic poems, your "Faust"?
Farewell, my Franz.
