At last I am able to send you the translation of your article. As you probably cannot understand why it has been delayed so long, and may perhaps even suspect that I was indifferent to your more than kind intention, I must tell you first of all how it has happened.
I was so moved by your work that I at once felt one thing distinctly, viz., that in something so encouraging and deeply touching I could not myself collaborate. I felt as shy and bashful as possible when I thought of writing with my own hand the praise which you dictated to me in your extremely brilliant article. I hesitated and wavered, and did not know how to begin. Then my young friend Ritter came to my aid, and asked me to let him do the translation. I consented, and reserved to myself the right of revising it afterwards, so as to set forth less my praise than the animation of your original style. R. and B. translated it between them, and I looked through it together with them. R. then went to work again, and the result of these careful endeavours I now lay before you, asking you to explain to yourself from these indications why the whole thing has been delayed so long. Of the actual version I can assure you with a good conscience that, according to my firm conviction, it is not unworthy of your original, which it renders adequately in the sense that one does not suspect a laborious translation, but might let it pass without hesitation for the German original of a not unaccomplished German author. I can advise you, therefore, without scruple to give your signature to this version, and leave it to you whether you will announce it to be a translation. In all you have said about the work and its author, the version contains nothing but an absolutely faithful translation of the original, every conceivable care having been taken to render its very brilliant, novel, and thoroughly artistic language as adequately as its individual flavour and fullness would allow. In places, however, where you indicate the subject matter and the material aspect of situations and scenes, the translator has made bold to use a little more liberty. He considered that in these respects the German original of the poem was nearer to him than to the author of the French description. The situations are therefore treated a little more exhaustively, and the German text has been immediately drawn upon, as was indeed your own wish. Perhaps the scenes have now and then been given a little too fully; but as in print the verses will appear in smaller type, I hope that this also will upon the whole add to the comprehension of the dramatic situations. Therefore I live in good hope that you will not be dissatisfied with the work; and if you still intend to give me an almost excessive proof of your love of my artistic being and to supply my friends with an important means of realizing what they love in my art, I shall feel highly honoured and pleased by the publication of this version, which I think had best take the form of an independent pamphlet, especially because in that way the important musical supplement suggested by you would be possible.
If I were to tell you what I felt while reading this article repeatedly and most carefully, I should scarcely be able to find words. Let this suffice: I feel more than fully rewarded for my efforts, my sacrifices, and my artistic struggles by recognizing the impression I have made upon you of all others. To be so fully understood was my only longing, and to have been understood is the most blissful satisfaction of that longing.
Truly, dear friend, you have turned the little Weimar into a very focus of my fame. When I read the numerous, comprehensive, and often very brilliant articles about "Lohengrin" which now come from Weimar, and compare them with the jealous enmity with which, for example, the Dresden critics used constantly to attack me, working with sad consistency for the systematic confusion of the public, I look upon Weimar as a blessed asylum where at last I can breathe freely and ease my troubled heart. Thank Lobe very cordially in my name; his judgment has surprised and delighted me. Also tell Biedenfeld and the author of the article in the "Frankfort Conversationsblatt" that I still hope to thank them by endeavouring with all my power to justify by new works their great opinion of me. Greet them kindly, also Raff, and Genast, and Zigesar, without forgetting the brave artists to whom I owe so much gratitude.
I am deep in my work on "Opera and Drama;" it is, as I told you, of the greatest importance to me, and I hope it will not be without importance to others. But it will be a great, stout volume. Ah, would it were spring, and that I might be once more a full-blooded, poetizing musician! I am not very well off; care, care, nothing but care, is the funereal chant which I have to sing to every young day.
You also have been in a very pitiable plight. Your serious indisposition and the depressed mood it left behind were strange things to you, and have affected me very much. For my comfort I assume that your illness is quite gone; but was I not right, dear friend, when I warned you and expressed to you my anxiety for your health, because I knew what unheard-of exertions you had made for my sake? Please set my fear at rest soon and comfort me thereby.
Finally, I ask you to transmit my sincerest and most cordial respects to your faithful, highly esteemed friend. May you two extraordinary people be happy! Farewell, and accept my heartfelt thanks for your friendship, which is now the richest source of my joy.
Your
R. W.
ZURICH, December 24th, 1850