Richard Wagner
Vienna, May 14, 1861.
A dry flower, and with it the inscription:
From my unfortunate brother’s grave.
Th. Schurz, sister of Lenau.
I can still remember the acquisition of this leaf of the album. Aunt Lotti, Elvira, and I had one afternoon gone on a pilgrimage to the hamlet where rest the ashes of Nikolaus Lenau,[[6]] for whose melancholy poems Elvira cherished an enthusiasm. On this occasion we visited the poet’s sister, who was living in a little country-house not far from the graveyard. Frau Schurz told us much about the unhappy man’s last years, spent in incurable insanity, and showed us many relics, silhouettes of himself and of Sophie Löwenthal, the woman whom he had loved so passionately with a love not unreturned but unaccepted; and she herself took us to the graveyard to pick there the twig that I have now before my eyes.
Is it accident, or did Elvira know that Nikolaus Niembsch once meant to tear himself away from Sophie Löwenthal and to marry another who was also one of the great and famous figures of the time? At all events, on the following page of the album stands the following autograph:
Ich will, das Wort ist mächtig
“I will,” the word is mighty;
When spoken staunch and still,