My Life. Volume 2

The waters, whether for internal or external use, are known to be powerfully impregnated with iron, and in taking them I had the same experience as on previous occasions. With my extremely excitable nervous system, they were a source of more trouble than relief to me. The leisure hours were filled up by reading Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften, which I had not read since I was quite young. This time I absolutely devoured the book from beginning to end, and it also became a source of heated discussions between Herwegh and myself. As Herwegh possessed an extensive knowledge of the characteristics of our great poetic literature, he felt it incumbent on him to defend the character of Charlotte against my attacks. My vehemence on the subject showed what a strange creature I still was at over forty, and in my heart of hearts I had to admit that Herwegh judged Gothe's poem objectively more correctly than I did, as I always felt depressed by a kind of moral bondage, to which Herwegh, if he had ever experienced it at all, submitted placidly, owing to his peculiar relations with his strong-minded wife. When the time came to an end, and I realised that I had not much to hope for from the treatment, we returned to Zurich. This was about the middle of August, and I now began to look forward impatiently to my tour in Italy. At last, in the month of September, which I had been told was quite suitable for visiting Italy, I set off on the journey via Geneva, full of indescribable ideas of what was before me, and of what I might see as the outcome of my search. Once again amid all sorts of strange adventures, I reached Turin by special mail-coach over Mont Cenis. Finding nothing to detain me there more than a couple of days, I hurried on to Genoa. There, at any rate, the longed-for marvels seemed to be within reach. The grand impression produced on me by that, city overcomes, even to this day, any longing to visit the rest of Italy. For a few days I was in a dream of delight; but my extreme loneliness amidst these impressions soon made me feel that I was a stranger in that world, and that I should never be at home in it. Absolutely inexperienced as I was in searching out the treasures of art on a systematic plan, I gave myself up in this new world to a peculiar state of mind that might be described as a musical one, and my main idea was to find some turning-point that might induce me to remain there in quiet enjoyment. My only object still was to find a refuge where I might enjoy the congenial peace suited to some new artistic creation. In consequence, however, of thoughtlessly indulging in ices, I soon got an attack of dysentery, which produced the most depressing lassitude after my previous exaltation. I wanted to flee from the tremendous noise of the harbour, near which I was staying, and seek for the most absolute calm; and thinking a trip to Spezia would benefit me, I went there by steamer a week later. Even this excursion, which lasted only one night, was turned into a trying adventure, thanks to a violent head-wind. The dysentery became worse, owing to sea-sickness, and in the most utterly exhausted condition, scarcely able to drag myself another step, I made for the best hotel in Spezia, which, to my horror, was situated in a noisy, narrow street.

After a night spent in fever and sleeplessness, I forced myself to take a long tramp the next day through the hilly country, which was covered with pine woods. It all looked dreary and desolate, and I could not think what I should do there. Returning in the afternoon, I stretched myself, dead tired, on a hard couch, awaiting the long-desired hour of sleep. It did not come; but I fell into a kind of somnolent state, in which I suddenly felt as though I were sinking in swiftly flowing water. The rushing sound formed itself in my brain into a musical sound, the chord of E flat major, which continually re-echoed in broken forms; these broken chords seemed to be melodic passages of increasing motion, yet the pure triad of E flat major never changed, but seemed by its continuance to impart infinite significance to the element in which I was sinking. I awoke in sudden terror from my doze, feeling as though the waves were rushing high above my head. I at once recognised that the orchestral overture to the Rheingold, which must long have lain latent within me, though it had been unable to find definite form, had at last been revealed to me. I then quickly realised my own nature; the stream of life was not to flow to me from without, but from within. I decided to return to Zurich immediately, and begin the composition of my great poem. I telegraphed to my wife to let her know my decision, and to have my study in readiness.

The same evening I took my place on the coach going to Genoa along the Riviera di Levante. I again had the opportunity of getting exquisite impressions of the country during this journey, which lasted over the whole of the following day. It was, above all, the colouring of the wonders that presented themselves to my eyes which gave me such delight—the redness of the rocks, the blue of the sky and the sea, the pale green of the pines; even the dazzling white of a herd of cattle worked upon me so powerfully that I murmured to myself with a sigh, 'How sad it is that I cannot remain to enjoy all this, and thus gratify my sensuous nature.'

At Genoa I again felt so agreeably stimulated that I suddenly thought I had only yielded to some foolish weakness, and resolved to carry out my original plan. I was already making arrangements for travelling to Nice along the celebrated Riviera di Ponente, of which I had heard so much, but I had scarcely decided on my former plans, when I realised that the fact which refreshed and invigorated me was not the renewal of my delight over Italy, but the resolve to take up my work again. And indeed, as soon as I made up my mind to alter this plan, the old condition set in once more, with all the symptoms of dysentery. I thereupon understood myself, and giving up the journey to Nice, I returned direct by the nearest route via Alessandria and Novara.

This time I passed the Borromean Islands with supreme indifference, and got back to Zurich over the St. Gotthard.

When I had once returned, the only thing that could have made me happy would have been to start at once on my great work. For the present, however, I saw that it would be seriously interrupted by my appointment with Liszt, who was to be in Bale at the beginning of October. I was restless and annoyed at being so unsettled, and spent the time in visiting my wife, who, thinking that I would be away longer, was taking the waters at Baden am Stein. As I was easily prevailed upon to try any experiment of this kind if only the person who recommended it were sufficiently sanguine, I allowed myself to be persuaded into taking a course of hot baths, and the process heightened my excitment considerably.

At last the time for the meeting in Bale arrived. At the invitation of the Grand Duke of Baden, Liszt had arranged and conducted a musical festival in Karlsruhe, the aim of which was to give the public an adequate interpretation of our respective works. As I was not yet allowed to enter the territory of the German confederation, Liszt had chosen Bale as the place nearest to the Baden frontier, and had brought with him some young men who had been his devoted admirers in Karlsruhe, to give me a hearty welcome.

I was the first to arrive, and in the evening, while sitting alone in the dining-room of the hotel, 'Zu den drei Konigen,' the air of the trumpet fanfare (from Lohengrin) announcing the King's arrival, sung by a strong though not numerous chorus of men's voices, reached me from the adjacent vestibule. The door opened and Liszt entered at the head of his joyful little band, whom he introduced to me. I also saw Bulow again, for the first time since his adventurous winter visit to Zurich and St. Gall, and with him Joachim, Peter Cornelius, Richard Pohl, and Dionys Pruckner.

Liszt told me that he was expecting a visit from his friend Caroline von Wittgenstein and her young daughter Marie the next day. The bright and merry spirit which prevailed at that gathering (which, like everything that Liszt promoted, in spite of its intimate nature, was characterised by magnificent unconventionality) grew to a pitch of almost eccentric hilarity as the night wore on. In the midst of our wild mood I suddenly missed Pohl. I knew him to be a champion of our cause through having read his articles under the pseudonym of 'Hoplit.' I stole away and found him in bed suffering from a splitting headache. My sympathy had such an effect upon him that he declared himself suddenly cured. Jumping out of bed, he allowed me to help him dress hurriedly, and again joining our friends we sat up till the night was far advanced and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. On the following day our happiness was complete when the ladies arrived, who for the next few days formed the centre of our little party. In those days it was impossible for any one coming into contact with Princess Caroline not to be fascinated by her bright manner and the charming way in which she entered into all our little plans.

She was as much interested in the more important questions that affected us as in the accidental details of our life in relation to society, and she had the magnetic power of extracting the very best out of those with whom she associated. Her daughter gave one quite a different impression. She was barely fifteen and had a rather dreamy look on her young face, and was at the stage 'in which womanhood and childhood meet,' thus allowing me to pay her the compliment of calling her 'the child.' During our lively discussions and outbursts of merriment, her dark pensive eyes would gaze at us so calmly that we unconsciously felt that in her innocence she unwittingly understood the cause of our gaiety. In those days I suffered from the vanity of wishing to recite my poems aloud (a proceeding which, by the bye, annoyed Herwegh very much), and consequently it was no difficult task to induce me to read out my Nibelungen drama. As the time of our parting was drawing near, I decided I would read Siegfried only.

When Liszt was obliged to leave for Paris on a visit to his children, we all accompanied him as far as Strasburg. I had decided to follow him to Paris, but the Princess intended going on from Strasburg to Weimar with her daughter.

During the few spare hours of our short stay in Strasburg I was asked to read some of my work to the ladies, but could not find a suitable opportunity. However, on the morning of our intended parting, Liszt came to my room to tell me that the ladies had, after all, decided to accompany us to Paris, and added, laughing, that Marie had induced her mother to change her plans, as she wished to hear the rest of the Nibelungen poems. The prolonging of our journey, with all its delightful incidents, was quite in accordance with my taste.

We were very sorry to part from our younger friends. Bulow told me that Joachim, who had been holding himself rather aloof, could not forget my tremendous article on 'Judaism,' and that he consequently felt shy and awkward in my presence. He also said that when Joachim had asked him (Bulow) to read one of his compositions, he had inquired with a certain gentle diffidence, whether I should be able to trace 'anything Jewish' in it.

This touching trait in Joachim's character induced me to say a few particularly friendly words to him at parting and to embrace him warmly. I never saw him again, [Footnote: This was written in 1869.] and heard to my astonishment that he had taken up a hostile attitude to both Liszt and myself, almost immediately after we had left. The other young men were the victims, on their return to Germany, of a very funny although unpleasant experience, that of coming into contact with the police at Baden. They had entered the town singing the same bright tune of the fanfare from Lohengrin, and they had a good deal of difficulty in giving a satisfactory account of themselves to the inhabitants.

Our journey to Paris and our stay there were full of important incidents, and left indelible traces of our exceptionally devoted friendship. After great difficulty we found rooms for the ladies in the Hotel des Princes, and Liszt then suggested that we should go for a stroll on the boulevards, which at that hour were deserted. I presume that our feelings on this occasion must have differed as much as our reminiscences. When I entered the sitting-room the next morning, Liszt remarked, with his characteristic little smile, that the Princess Marie was already in a great state of excitement at the thought of further readings. Paris did not offer much attraction to me, and as Princess Caroline desired to arouse as little attention as possible, and Liszt was frequently called away on private business, we took up our reading, where we had left it off in Bale, on the very first morning of our stay in Paris, even before we had been outside the hotel. I was not allowed to stop reading on the following days until the Ring des Nibelungen was quite finished. Finally Paris claimed our attention, but while the ladies were visiting the museums I was unfortunately obliged to stay in my room, tortured by continually recurring nervous headaches. Liszt, however, induced me occasionally to join them in their excursions. At the beginning of our stay he had engaged a box for a performance of Robert le Diable, because he wanted the ladies to see the great opera house under the most favourable conditions. I believe that my friends shared the terrible depression from which I was suffering on this occasion. Liszt, however, must have had other motives for going. He had asked me to wear evening dress, and seemed very pleased I had done so when at the interval he invited me to go for a stroll with him through the foyer. I could see he was under the influence of certain reminiscences of delightful evenings spent in this selfsame foyer, and that the dismal performance of this night must have cast a gloom over him. We stole quietly back to our friends, hardly knowing why we had started on this monotonous expedition. One of the artistic pleasures I enjoyed most was a concert given by the Morin-Chevillard Quartette Society, at which they played Beethoven's Quartettes in E flat major and C sharp minor; the excellent rendering of this work impressed me in very much the same way as the performance of the Ninth Symphony by the Conservatoire orchestra had once done. I had again the opportunity of admiring the great artistic zeal with which the French master these treasures of music, which even to this day are so coarsely handled by the Germans.

This was the first time that I really became intimately acquainted with the C sharp minor quartette, because I had never before grasped its melody. If, therefore, I had nothing else to remind me of my stay in Paris, this would have been an unfading memory. I also carried away with me other equally significant impressions. One day Liszt invited me to spend an evening with him and his children, who were living very quietly in the care of a governess in Paris.

It was quite a novelty to me to see Liszt with these young girls, and to watch him in his intercourse with his son, then a growing lad. Liszt himself seemed to feel strange in his fatherly position, which for several years had only brought him cares, without any of the attendant pleasures.

On this occasion we again resumed our reading of the last act of Gotterdammerung, which brought us to the longed-for end of the tetralogy. Berlioz, who looked us up during that time, endured these readings with quite admirable patience. We had lunch with him one morning before his departure, and he had already packed his music for his concert tour through Germany. Liszt played different selections from his Benvenuto Cellini, while Berlioz sang to them in his peculiarly monotonous style. I also met the journalist, Jules Janin, who was quite a celebrity in Paris, although it took me a long time to realise this; the only thing that impressed me about him was his colloquial Parisian French, which was quite unintelligible to me.

A dinner, followed by a musical evening at the house of the celebrated pianoforte manufacturer, Erard, also remains in my memory. At this house, as well as at a dinner-party given by Liszt at the Palais Royal, I again met his children. Daniel, the youngest of them, particularly attracted me by his brightness and his striking resemblance to his father, but the girls were very shy. I must not forget to mention an evening spent at the house of Mme. Kalergis, a woman of exceptional individuality, whom I met here for the first time since the early performance of Tannhauser in Dresden. When at dinner she asked me a question about Louis Napoleon, I forgot myself so far in my excitement and resentment as to put an end to all further conversation by saying that I could not understand how anybody could possibly expect great things from a man whom no woman could really love. After dinner, when Liszt sat down at the piano, young Marie Wittgenstein noticed that I had withdrawn silently and rather sadly from the rest of the company; this was due partly to my headache, and partly to the feeling of isolation that came over me in these surroundings. I was touched by her sympathy and evident wish to divert me.

After a very fatiguing week my friends left Paris. As I had again been prevented from starting on my work, I now decided not to leave Paris until I had restored my nerves to that state of calm which was indispensable to the fulfilment of my great project. I had invited my wife to meet me on our way back to Zurich, to give her the opportunity of seeing Paris again, where we had both suffered so much. After her arrival, Kietz and Anders turned up regularly for dinner, and a young Pole, the son of my old and beloved friend, Count Vincenz Tyszkiewicz, also came to see us very often.

This young man (who had been born since the early days of my friendship with his father) had devoted himself passionately to music, as so many do nowadays. He had made quite a stir in Paris after a performance of Freischutz at the Grand Opera, by declaring that the many cuts and alterations which had been made were a fraud on the initiated public, and he had sued the management of the theatre for the return of the entrance money, which he regretted ever having paid. He also had an idea of publishing a paper with the view of drawing attention to the slovenly conduct of musical affairs in Paris, which in his opinion was an insult to public taste.

Prince Eugen von Wittgenstein-Sayn, a young amateur painter who had belonged to Liszt's circle of intimate friends, painted a miniature of me, for which I had to give him several sittings; it was done under Kietz's guidance, and turned out pretty well.

I had an important consultation with a young doctor named Lindemann, a friend of Kietz's; he strongly advised me to give up the water cure, and tried to convert me to the toxic theory. He had attracted the attention of Parisian society by inoculating himself with various poisons in the hospital before witnesses, in order to show their effects upon the system, an experiment which he carried out in an accurate and thoroughly effective manner. With regard to my own case, he stated that it could be easily remedied if we ascertained by careful experiments what metallic substance would specifically influence my nervous system. He unhesitatingly recommended me, in case of very violent attacks, to take laudanum, and in default of that poison he seemed to consider valerian an excellent remedy.

Tired out, restless and exceedingly unstrung, I left Paris with Minna towards the end of October, without in the least understanding why I had spent so much money there. Hoping to counterbalance this by pushing my operas in Germany, I calmly retired to the seclusion of my Zurich lodgings, fully decided not to leave them again until some parts, at least, of my Nibelungen dramas were set to music.

In the beginning of November I started on this long-postponed work. For five and a half years (since the end of March, 1848) I had held aloof from all musical composition, and as I very soon found myself in the right mood for composing, this return to my work can best be compared to a reincarnation of my soul after it had been wandering in other spheres. As far as the technique was concerned, I soon found myself in a difficulty when I started to write down the orchestral overture, conceived in Spezia in a kind of half-dream, in my usual way of sketching it out on two lines. I was compelled to resort to the complete score-formula; this tempted me to try a new way of sketching, which was a very hasty and superficial one, from which I immediately wrote out the complete score.

This process often led to difficulties, as the slightest interruption in my work made me lose the thread of my rough draft, and I had to start from the beginning before I could recall it to my memory.

I did not let this occur in regard to Rheingold. The whole of this composition had been finished in outline on the 16th of January, 1854, and consequently the plan for the musical structure of this work in four parts had been drawn in all its thematic proportions, as it was in this great prelude that these thematic foundations of the whole had to be laid.

I remember how much my health improved during the writing of this work; and my surroundings during that time consequently left very little impression on my mind.

During the first months of the new year I also conducted a few orchestral concerts. To please my friend Sulzer, I produced, amongst other works, the overture to Gluck's Iphigenia in Aulis, after having written a new finale to it. The necessity for altering the finale by Mozart induced me to write an article for the Brendel musical journal on this artistic problem. These occupations did not, however, prevent me from working at the Rheingold score, which I quickly dotted down in pencil on a few single sheets. On the 28th May I finished the instrumentation of the Rheingold. There had been very little change in my life at home; things had remained the same during the last few years, and everything went smoothly. Only my financial position was rather precarious, owing to the past year's expenses for furniture, etc., and also to the more luxurious mode of living I had adopted, on the strength of my belief that my operas, which were now better known, would bring me in a larger income.

The most important theatres, however, still held back, and to my mortification all my efforts at negotiation with Berlin and Vienna proved fruitless. In consequence of these disappointments I suffered great worries and cares during the greater part of that year. I tried to counteract these by new work, and instead of writing out the score of Rheingold I began the composition of the Walkure. Towards the end of July I had finished the first scene, but had to interrupt my work on account of a journey to the south of Switzerland.

I had received an invitation from the 'Eidgenossische Musikgesellschaft' to conduct their musical festival at Sion that year. I had refused, but at the same time promised that if possible I would conduct Beethoven's Symphony in A major at one of the gala concerts. I intended on the way to call on Karl Ritter, who had gone to live with his young wife at Montreux on the Lake of Geneva. The week I spent with this young couple gave me ample opportunities for doubting whether their happiness would be of long duration.

Karl and I left shortly afterwards for the musical festival in Valais. On our way we were joined at Martigny by an extraordinary young man, Robert von Hornstein, who had been introduced to me on the occasion of my great musical festival the year before as an enthusiast and a musician. This quaint mortal was regarded as a very welcome addition to our party, particularly by young Ritter, and both young people looked forward with great enthusiasm to the treat in store for them; Hornstein had come all the way from Swabia to hear me conduct the festival in the canton of Valais. We arrived in the midst of the musical festivities, and I was terribly disappointed to find how very badly and inartistically the preliminary arrangements had been made. I was so taken aback, after having received the worst possible impression of the sound of the very scanty orchestra in a small church, which served as church and concert-hall combined, and was so furious at the thought of having been dragged into such an affair, that I merely wrote a few lines to Methfessel, the organising director of the festival, who had come from Berne, and took my leave, without further ceremony. I escaped by the next post-chaise that was just on the point of leaving, and I did this so expeditiously that even my young friends were unaware of my departure. I purposely kept the fact of my sudden flight from them; I had my own reasons for doing so, and as they were rather interesting from a psychological point of view, I have never forgotten them.