Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1

by Richard Wagner; Franz Liszt

My silence was to a large extent caused by my weak state of health. For more than two months I have been using a water cure, and during that time I found it quite impossible to write to you at such length as I felt more and more every day that I ought to do. A most cogent reason for writing to you arose to me from reading your pamphlet on my two operas, which I received at the hydropathic establishment. Your rare friendship for me, your energetic love of my works, your restless zeal in making propaganda for those works, and, before all, the splendid enthusiasm, the spirit, the subtlety, and boldness with which your zeal inspired you, moved me too deeply and powerfully to allow me to express my gratitude in the excited state in which I was. I had to leave this to a time when better health and a more collected mind would make it possible for me to communicate with you at greater length. I hope now to have got so far, and must tell you first of all that the sacrifice of the most beautiful affection which you have again offered me has moved me to the heart and has made me very glad and happy. You have moved me most deeply in all those parts where you had come to a perfect agreement with me, for the reason that this agreement was not a ready-made thing, but a discovery new to both of us. Most specially were my attention, sympathy, and eagerness awakened when I saw my original intention newly reflected in the mirror of your individual conception; for here I was able to realize fully the impression I had been fortunate enough to produce on your fertile artistic receptivity.

What you have been to me I tried recently to explain in a public manner, and having to write for publicity, I did so as soberly as possible, limiting myself entirely to the facts of our relations which I wanted to explain to those who perhaps could not understand such a friendship nowadays. I did this, being irresistibly impelled by my heart, in a "Mittheilung an meine Freunde," which I prefixed as an introduction to my three operatic poems. In the same place I stated plainly that I had despaired of ever again undertaking an artistic task, and that to you and your active sympathy it was solely due if I once more had gathered sufficient courage and energy for an artistic enterprise, which I should dedicate to you and to those of my friends comprised in "the local idea: Weimar." The timidity of Messrs. Hartel, the publishers of the book, has taken exception to certain passages in that preface to which I did not wish to have any demonstrative intention attributed, and which I might have expressed just as well in a different way; and the appearance of the book has in consequence been much retarded, to my great annoyance, for special reasons.

For the public declaration as to the intended destiny of my next dramatic work would, owing to my latest resolution, require an essential modification if it were to be quite in accordance with actual circumstances. But, although the preface, written at the beginning of last August, appears in the present circumstances too late, the aforesaid declaration will be given to the public without any change; and if I cannot fulfill the promise given in it in the manner there stated, it may at least serve you and my Weimar friends as a proof of the genuine sincerity of the intention then held by me. I should also be glad to think that in that public declaration I have furnished a sign of my gratitude for the sympathy they have shown to me, even if, as I said before, I cannot prove that gratitude in the exact manner there promised.

To you, my dear Liszt, I am now compelled to confess that my resolution of writing a new opera for Weimar has been so essentially modified as scarcely to exist any longer in that form.

Hear then the strictly veracious account of the artistic enterprise in which I have been engaged for some time, and the turn it had of necessity to take.

In the autumn of 1848 I sketched for the first time the complete myth of the "Nibelungen", such as it henceforth belongs to me as my poetic property. My next attempt at dramatizing the chief catastrophe of that great action for our theatre was "Siegfried's Death". After much wavering I was at last, in the autumn of 1850, on the point of sketching the musical execution of this drama, when again the obvious impossibility of having it adequately performed anywhere prevented me in the first instance from beginning the work. To get rid of this desperate mood, I wrote the book "Oper und Drama." Last spring your article on "Lohengrin" inspired me to such a degree that for your sake I resumed the execution of a drama quickly and joyously; this I wrote to you at the time: but "Siegfried's Death"—that, I knew for certain, was in the first instance impossible. I found that I should have to prepare it by another drama, and therefore took up the long-cherished idea of making the young Siegfried the subject of a poem. In it everything that in "Siegfried's Death" was either narrated or more or less taken for granted was to be shown in bold and vivid outline by means of actual representation. This poem was soon sketched and completed. When I was going to send it to you, I for the first time felt a peculiar anxiety. It seemed as if I could not possibly send it to you without explanation, as if I had many things to tell you, partly as to the manner of representation and partly as to the necessary comprehension of the poem itself. In the first instance it occurred to me that I still had many and various things to communicate previous to my coming before my friends with this poem. It was for that reason that I wrote the long preface to my three earlier operatic poems, of which mention has already been made. After this I was going to begin the composition, and found, to my joy, that the music adapted itself to these verses quite naturally and easily, as of its own accord. But the very commencement of the work reminded me that I should ruin my health entirely if I did not take care of it thoroughly before yielding to my impulse and finishing the work at a stretch and probably without interruption. When I went to the hydropathic establishment, I felt compelled at last to send you the poem; but, strangely enough, something always seemed to restrain me. I was led to hesitate, because I felt as if your acquaintance with this poem would place you in a certain awkward position, as if you would not exactly know what to make of it, whether to receive it with hope or diffidence. At last, on mature consideration, my plan in its logical sequence became clear to me. Listen to me:—

This "Young Siegfried" also is no more than a fragment, and as a separate entity it cannot produce its proper and sure impression until it occupies its necessary place in a complete whole, a place which I now assign to it, together with "Siegfried's Death," in my newly designed plan. In these two dramas a number of necessary relations were left to the narrative or even to the sagacity of the hearer. Everything that gave to the action and the character of these two dramas their infinitely touching and widely spreading significance had to be omitted in the representation, and could be communicated to the mind alone. But, according to my inmost conviction since formed, a work of art, and especially a drama, can have its true effect only when the poetic intention in all its more important motives speaks fully to the senses, and I cannot and dare not sin against this truth which I have recognized. I am compelled therefore to communicate my entire myth in its deepest and widest significance with the greatest artistic precision, so as to be fully understood. Nothing in it must in any sense be left to be supplied by thought or reflection; the unsophisticated human mind must be enabled by its artistic receptivity to comprehend the whole, because by that means only may the most detached parts be rightly understood.

Two principal motives of my myth therefore remain to be represented, both of which are hinted at in "Young Siegfried", the first in the long narrative of Brynhild after her awakening (Act III.), the second in the scene between Alberich and the Wanderer in the second act and between the Wanderer and Mime in the first. That to this I was led not only by artistic reflection, but by the splendid and, for the purpose of representation, extremely rich material of these motives, you will readily understand when you consider the subject more closely. Think then of the wondrously fatal love of Siegmund and Siegelinde, of Wotan in his deep, mysterious relation to that love, in his dispute with Fricka, in his terrible self-contention when, for the sake of custom, he decrees the death of Siegmund, finally of the glorious Valkyrie Brynhild, as, divining the innermost thought of Wotan, she disobeys the god, and is punished by him; consider this wealth of motive indicated in the scene between the Wanderer and the Wala, and at greater length in the above-mentioned tale of Brynhild, as the material of a drama which precedes the two Siegfrieds; and you will understand that it was not reflection, but rather enthusiasm, which inspired my latest plan.

That plan extends to three dramas: (l) "The Valkyrie"; (2) "Young Siegfried"; (3) "Siegfried's Death". In order to give everything completely, these three dramas must be preceded by a grand introductory play: "The Rape of the Rhinegold". The object is the complete representation of everything in regard to this rape: the origin of the Nibelung treasure, the possession of that treasure by Wotan, and the curse of Alberich, which in "Young Siegfried" occur in the form of a narrative. By the distinctness of representation which is thus made possible, and which at the same time does away with everything of the nature of a lengthy narration, or at least condenses it in a few pregnant moments, I gain sufficient space to intensify the wealth of relations, while in the previous semi-epical mode of treatment I was compelled to cut down and enfeeble all this. I mention only one thing:—

Alberich ascends from the depth of the earth to the three daughters of the Rhine; he persecutes them with his loathsome wooing; rejected by one, he turns to the other; laughing and teasing, they all refuse the gnome. Then the Rhinegold begins to glow; Alberich is attracted; he inquires as to its meaning; the girls tell him that they use it as a bright plaything, and that its splendour lights up the depth of the waves with blissful glow, but that he might work many wonders, might gain power and strength, wealth and dominion, through means of the gold, who could weld it to a ring. But only he who renounces love can do this. They tell him that to prevent any one from robbing the gold they have been appointed its warders, for he who approaches them would certainly not desire the gold; Alberich at least is not likely to do this, as he is so much in love with them. Again they laugh at him. Then the Nibelung grows furious, he robs the gold, and takes it with him into the depths.