Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt Volume II Part 12

Besides him, my intercourse is limited to Sainton, the leader of the orchestra, who caused my ill-fated appointment here, and a certain Luders, who lives with him. Both are ardently devoted to me, and do all in their power to make my stay here pleasant.

Apart from this, I frequently go to Prager. Quite recently a Mr.

Ellerton, a rich amateur, approached me very cordially. He has heard my operas in Germany, and my portrait has been hanging in his room for two years. He is the first Englishman I have seen who does not care particularly for Mendelssohn. A fine, amiable mind.

Klindworth has made the pianoforte arrangement of the first act of the "Valkyrie," which he plays beautifully. Unfortunately I have lost my voice entirely, and can sing very little, so that I am afraid I shall not be able to be of much service to you in that way.

You will have to do all the work next September. You owe me a great debt, you reticent man. If I look forward to anything in the future as pure happiness, it is my becoming acquainted through your means with your new compositions. Do not forget to bring me every one of them. I congratulate you on your ma.s.s from the bottom of my heart. Let us hope that you will derive much pleasure from it at Gran.

And how is the Princess? Joyful and sorrowful? Does she still preserve her bright enthusiasm? And Beatrice--I mean the Child?

Greet her for me a thousand times.

Farewell, dearest, most unique of friends. Believe me that the thought of you is an ever-new delight to my heart. Be thanked for your love!

Farewell.

Your

R. W.

LONDON, May 16th, 1855.

188.

22, PORTLAND TERRACE, REGENT'S PARK, LONDON,

May 26th, 1855.

Once more, dearest Franz, I must make a complaint about the "Faust" overture. The Hartels have sent me an abominable arrangement for four hands, of which I cannot possibly approve.

Did not you tell them that B., who, I believe, had already made a be ginning, would best be able to make this arrangement?

Klindworth also would be prepared for it. In any case it should be a pianist of that type. The actual arrangement, which I yesterday returned to the Hartels through a music-seller, must not appear.

However, some wrong notes in this arrangement have drawn my attention to the fact that very probably there are many errors in the score as well. You will remember that it was a copy which I sent to you for your own use, asking you to correct such errors as might occur in your mind, or else to have them corrected, because it would be tedious for me to revise the copy. For the same reason I urgently requested the Hartels, if they printed the score, to send me a proof. You are in frequent communication with the Hartels, and the edition of this overture is really your doing. Be not angry therefore if I ask you to set the matter completely right when convenient. For heaven's sake, forgive me for troubling you with this trifle. The day after tomorrow I have my sixth concert, and a month afterwards I start for home.

Shall I hear from you soon?

A thousand greetings.

Your R. W.

189. DEAREST RICHARD,

I returned here yesterday from the Dusseldorf Musical Festival, tired and dull. Hiller, who conducted the whole, had invited me, and it interested me to go through the whole thing for once, to hear "Paradise and the Peri," and to applaud Jenny Lind. I need not tell YOU anything about it, and I am not much the wiser myself. Although the whole festival may be called a great success, it wanted something which, indeed, could not have been expected from it. In the art world there are very different kinds of laurels and thistles, but you need care very little about such. "The eagle flies to the sun."

Then you are reading Dante? He is excellent company for you. I, on my part, shall furnish a kind of commentary to his work. For a long time I had in my head a Dante symphony, and in the course of this year it is to be finished. There are to be three movements, h.e.l.l, PURGATORY, and PARADISE, the two first purely instrumental, the last with chorus. When I visit you in autumn, I shall probably be able to bring it with me; and if you do not dislike it, you must allow me to inscribe it with your name.

With the Hartels little can be done. If the arrangement for four hands of the Faust overture has already been made, I do not advise you to propose some one else. The only thing that can be done with the four-hand arrangement is to ask Klindworth to make some corrections in accordance with your instructions, and to have some of the plates newly engraved without mentioning Klindworth's name on the t.i.tle-page. Another time it would be a practical thing to send in the four-hand arrangement together with the score, and to come to terms with the publisher about it.

The att.i.tude of the Hartels towards us is naturally always a little reserved. I, for my part, cannot complain of them, and they have always treated me in a decent and gentlemanly manner.

But I should not rely upon them for many things, because their intimate friends are decidedly adverse to us; and for the present we shall not be able to arrive at more than a peaceful, expectant footing with them. Although this may sometimes be inconvenient, I think it best to let it continue.

I am surprised that you found so many mistakes in the proofs of the "Faust" score, for, amongst other advantages which they possess as publishers, one is bound in justice to admit that the Hartels have excellent readers (Dorffel, Sch.e.l.lenberg, etc.).

Therefore use time and patience in correcting, and where necessary let the plates be engraved over again.

When shall you be back in Zurich? At Dusseldorf they were saying that you had already left London, and jealous Philistia received the news with a joy which I was not sorry to spoil. Whatever may happen, and however it may happen, I implore you to

"Hold out and persevere."

In your capacity of poeta sovrano, you must, as Dante says of Homer, pa.s.s on your way quietly and undisturbedly, si come sire.

All this dirt does not touch you. Write your "Nibelungen," and be content to live on as an immortal!

Later on I shall ask Klindworth to let me see the pianoforte arrangement of the first act of the "Valkyrie." How about that of the "Rhinegold?" Has H. kept it? Write to me about it, so that I may know how to get at it.

I have advised H. to settle in Berlin, where his position at the music school will be very useful to him. There is not much to be got by travelling about in our days. Later on he may go to Paris and London, but for the next few years Berlin will be a good field for his activity.

I shall stay here during the summer, until I start for Gran at the end of August. The musical task which occupies me is a new and considerably altered score of my choruses to "Prometheus,"

which I want to publish next winter. As soon as it is finished I shall return to my Dante symphony, which has partly been sketched.

Farewell, dearest, most unique of friends, and write soon to your serf, body and soul,

F. L.

WEYMAR, June 2nd, 1855.

The Princess and the Child send cordial greetings.

190.

Let me express to you, best of men, my astonishment at your ENORMOUS PRODUCTIVENESS. You have a Dante symphony in your head, have you? And it is to be finished in the autumn? Do not be annoyed by my astonishment at this miracle. When I look back upon your activity in these last years, you appear superhuman to me; there is something very strange about this. However, it is very natural that creating is our only joy, and alone makes life bearable to us. We are what we are only while we create; all the other functions of life have no meaning for us, and are at bottom concessions to the vulgarity of ordinary human existence, which can give us no satisfaction. All that I still desire in this world is a favourable mood and disposition for work, and I find it difficult enough to protect these from the attack of vulgarity. It is the same thing with you. But what astonishes me and appears worthy of envy is that you can create so much.

A "Divina Commedia" it is to be? That is a splendid idea, and I enjoy the music in antic.i.p.ation. But I must have a little talk with you about it. That "h.e.l.l" and "Purgatory" will succeed I do not call into question for a moment, but as to "Paradise" I have some doubts, which you confirm by saying that your plan includes choruses. In the Ninth Symphony the last choral movement is decidedly the weakest part, although it is historically important, because it discloses to us in a very naive manner the difficulties of a real musician who does not know how (after h.e.l.l and purgatory) he is to represent paradise. About this paradise, dearest Franz, there is in reality a considerable difficulty, and he who confirms this opinion is, curiously enough, Dante himself, the singer of Paradise, which in his "Divine Comedy" also is decidedly the weakest part. I have followed Dante with deepest sympathy through the "Inferno" and the "Purgatorio;" and when I emerged from the infernal slough, I washed myself, as does the poet, with the water of the sea at the foot of the Mountain of Purgatory. I enjoyed the divine morning, the pure air. I rose step by step, deadened one pa.s.sion after the other, battled with the wild instinct of life, till at last, arrived at the fire, I relinquished all desire of life, and threw myself into the glow in order to sink my personality in the contemplation of Beatrice.

But from this final liberation I was rudely awakened to be again, after all, what I had been before, and this was done in order to confirm the Catholic doctrine of a G.o.d Who, for His own glorification, had created this h.e.l.l of my existence, by the most elaborate sophisms and most childish inventions, quite unworthy of a great mind. This problematic proof I rejected from the bottom of my soul, and remained dissatisfied accordingly. In order to be just to Dante I had, as in the case of Beethoven, to occupy the historic standpoint; I had to place myself in Dante's time and consider the real object of his poem, which, no doubt, was intended to advocate a certain thing with his contemporaries- -I mean the reform of the Church. I had to confess that in this sense he understood marvellously well his advantage of expressing himself in an infallible manner through means of popular and generally accepted ideas. Before all, I cordially agreed with him in his praise of the saints who had chosen poverty of their own free-will. I had further to admire even in those sophisms his high poetic imagination and power of representation, just as I admire Beethoven's musical art in the last movement of his "Ninth Sympthony." I had further to acknowledge, with deepest and most sublime emotion, the wonderful inspiration through means of which the beloved of his youth, Beatrice, takes the form in which he conceives the Divine doctrine; and in so far as that doctrine teaches the purification of personal egoism through love, I joyfully acknowledge the doctrine of Beatrice. But the fact that Beatrice stands, as it were, on the chariot of the Church, that, instead of pure, simple doctrine, she preaches keen-witted ecclesiastic scholasticism, made her appear to me in a colder light, although the poet a.s.sures us that she shines and glows for ever. At last she became indifferent to me; and although as a mere reader I acknowledge that Dante has acted appropriately, in accordance with his time and his purpose, I should as a sympathetic co-poet have wished to lose my personal consciousness, and indeed all consciousness, in that fire. In that manner I should, no doubt, have fared better than even in the company of the Catholic Deity, although Dante represents it with the same art with which you, no doubt, will endeavour to celebrate it in your choruses. I faithfully record to you the impression which the "Divine Comedy" has made upon me, and which in the "Paradise" becomes to my mind a "divine comedy" in the literal sense of the word, in which I do not care to take part, either as a comedian or as a spectator. The misleading problem in these questions is always How to introduce into this terrible world, with an empty nothing beyond it, a G.o.d Who converts the enormous sufferings of existence into something fict.i.tious, so that the hoped-for salvation remains the only real and consciously enjoyable thing. This will do very well for the Philistine, especially the English Philistine. He makes very good terms with his G.o.d, entering into a contract by which, after having carried out certain points agreed upon, he is finally admitted to eternal bliss as a compensation for various failures in this world. But what have we in common with these notions of the mob?

You once expressed your view of human nature to the effect that man is "une intelligence, servie par des organes." If that were so, it would be a bad thing for the large majority of men, who have only "organs," but as good as no "intelligence," at least in your sense. To me the matter appears in a different light, viz.,- -

Man, like every other animal, embodies the "will of life," for which he fashions his organs according to his wants; and amongst these organs he also develops intellect, i.e., the organ of conceiving external things for the purpose of satisfying the desire of life to the best of his power. A NORMAL man is therefore he who possesses this organ, communicating with the external world (whose function is perception, just as that of the stomach is digestion) in a degree exactly sufficient for the satisfaction of the vital instinct by external means. That vital instinct in NORMAL man consists in exactly the same as does the vital instinct of the lowest animal, namely, in the desire of nourishment and of propagation. For this "will of life," this metaphysical first cause of all existence, desires nothing but to live--that is, to nourish and eternally reproduce itself--and this tendency can be seen identically in the coa.r.s.e stone, in the tenderer plant, and so forth up to the human animal. Only the organs are different, of which the will must avail itself in the higher stages of its objective existence, in order to satisfy its more complicated, and therefore more disputed and less easily obtainable, wants. By gaining this insight, which is confirmed by the enormous progress of modern science, we understand at once the characteristic feature of the life of the vast majority of men, and are no longer astonished because they appear to us simply as animals; for this is the NORMAL essence of man. A very large portion of mankind remains BELOW this NORMAL stage, for in them the complicated organ of perception is not developed even up to the capability of satisfying normal wants; but, on the other hand, although of course very rarely, there are ABNORMAL natures in which the ordinary measure of the organ of perception--that is, the brain--is exceeded, just as nature frequently forms monstrosities in which ONE ORGAN is developed at the expense of the others. Such a monstrosity, if it reaches the highest degree, is called GENIUS, which at bottom is caused only by an abnormally rich and powerful brain. This organ of perception, which originally and in normal cases looks outward for the purpose of satisfying the wants of the will of life, receives in the case of an abnormal development such vivid and such striking impressions from outside that for a time it emanc.i.p.ates itself from the service of the will, which originally had fashioned it for its own ends. It thus attains to a "will-less"--i.e., aesthetic-- contemplation of the world; and these external objects, contemplated APART FROM THE WILL, are exactly the ideal images which the ARTIST in a manner fixes and reproduces. The sympathy with the external world which is inherent in this contemplation is developed in powerful natures to a permanent forgetfulness of the original personal will, that is to a SYMPATHY with external things for their own sake, and no longer in connection with any personal interest.

The question then arises what we see in this abnormal state, and whether our sympathy takes the form of COMMON JOY or COMMON SORROW. This question the true MEN OF GENIUS and the true SAINTS of all times have answered in the sense that they have seen nothing but SORROW and felt nothing but COMMON SORROW. For they recognized the NORMAL state of all living things and the terrible, always self-contradictory, always self-devouring and blindly egotistic, nature of the "will of life" which is common to all living things. The horrible cruelty of this will, which in s.e.xual love aims only at its own reproduction, appeared in them for the first time reflected in the organ of perception, which in its normal state had felt its subjection to the Will to which it owed its existence. In this manner the organ of perception was placed in an abnormal sympathetic condition. It endeavoured to free itself permanently and finally from its disgraceful serfdom, and this it at last achieved in the perfect negation of the "will of life."

This act of the "negation of will" is the true characteristic of the saint, which finds its last completion in the absolute cessation of personal consciousness; and all consciousness must be personal and individual. But the saints of Christianity, simple-minded and enveloped in the Jewish dogma as they were, could not see this, and their limited imagination looked upon that much-desired stage as the eternal continuation of a life, freed from nature. Our judgment of the moral import of their resignation must not be influenced by this circ.u.mstance, for in reality they also longed for the cessation of their individual personality, i.e., of their existence. But this deep longing is expressed more purely and more significantly in the most sacred and oldest religion of the human race, the doctrine of the Brahmins, and especially in its final transfiguration and highest perfection, Buddhism. This also expounds the myth of a creation of the world by G.o.d, but it does not celebrate this act as a boon, but calls it a sin of Brahma which he, AFTER HAVING EMBODIED HIMSELF IN THIS WORLD, must atone for by the infinite sufferings of this very world. He finds his salvation in the saints who, by perfect negation of the "will of life," by the sympathy with all suffering which alone fills their heart, enter the state of Nirwana, i.e., "the land of being no longer." Such a saint was Buddha. According to his doctrine of the migration of souls every man is born again in the form of that creature on which he had inflicted pain, however pure his life might otherwise have been. He himself must now know this pain, and his sorrowful migration does not cease, until during an entire course of his new-born life he has inflicted pain on no creature, but has denied his own will of life in the sympathy with other beings. How sublime, how satisfying is this doctrine compared with the Judaeo-Christian doctrine, according to which a man (for, of course, the suffering ANIMAL exists for the benefit of man alone) has only to be obedient to the Church during this short life to be made comfortable for all eternity, while he who has been disobedient in this short life will be tortured for ever. Let us admit that Christianity is to us this contradictory phenomenon, because we know it only in its mixture with, and distortion by, narrow-hearted Judaism, while modern research has succeeded in showing that pure and un-alloyed Christianity was nothing but a branch of that venerable Buddhism which, after Alexander's Indian expedition, spread to the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean. In early Christianity we still see distinct traces of the perfect negation of the "will of life," of the longing for the destruction of the world, i.e., the cessation of all existence. The pity is that this deeper insight into the essence of things can be gained alone by the abnormally organised men previously referred to, and that they only can fully grasp it. In order to communicate this insight to others, the sublime founders of religion have therefore to speak in images, such as are accessible to the common normal perception. In this process much must be disfigured, although Buddha's doctrine of the migration of souls expresses the truth with almost perfect precision. The normal vulgarity of man and the license of general egoism further distort the image until it becomes a caricature. And I pity the poet who undertakes to restore the original image from this caricature. It seems to me that Dante, especially in the "Paradise," has not succeeded in this; and in his explanation of the Divine natures he appears, to me at least, frequently like a childish Jesuit. But perhaps you, dear friend, will succeed better, and as you are going to paint a TONE picture I might almost predict your success, for music is essentially the artistic, original image of the world. For the initiated no error is here possible. Only about the "Paradise," and especially about the choruses, I feel some friendly anxiety. You will not expect me to add less important things to this important matter.

I shall soon write again; on the 26th I leave here, and shall therefore have endured to the end. Farewell dear, dear Franz.

Your