Wagner, Richard

noting that the thoughts he has communicated to him are the same which decisively influenced his Weltanschauung twenty years ago and which set him on a fearless course towards social revolution, observing though that, as he is not a politician, they realized themselves in his case in ideas about art, ideas which he attempted to represent in his two detailed writings Die Kunst und die Revolution and Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft; in a similar vein Wagner acknowledges himself to have been an adherent of Proudhon's project for a Volksbank, and one of those who believed in the reorganization of the material and ethical aspects of society it would have entailed; now he realizes that his particular bent will prevent him from taking part in the regeneration of society he intends, and that he will make his contribution on an aesthetic level; in the closing part of the letter Wagner also agrees with his opinion concerning King Ludwig II of Bavaria and the threats to which he is exposed, but rules out as fruitless and inadmissible any personal involvement [in his hopes of using his influence with the king to convince the latter of his radical economic theories] ("......Insofern sich die Welt durch Zahlengesetze erfassen und regeln lässt, werde ich - nach meiner Naturbeschaffenheit - keinen Antheil an ihrer Regeneration nehmen können; mir ist einzig vorbehalten, durch ästhetische Einwirkung auf ihr ethisches Gefühl zu wirken...")

3 pages, 8vo (18.5 x 12.5cm), together with a later typed transcription and manuscript French translation, Lucerne, 12 May 1869, light dust-staining and browning

Sämtliche Briefe, xxi (2013) p.144 (location unknown): published after A. Holde 'Four Unknown Letters of Richard Wagner' in Musical Quarterly, volume 27 (1941), pp.232.

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, where appropriate
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A REMARKABLE STATEMENT OF WAGNER'S POLITICAL AND ARTISTIC WORLD-VIEW IN 1869.

In this reply to the Munich merchant Josef Kölbl, Wagner very politely, but ultimately crushingly, rejects any possible involvement by him in convincing the Bavarian king, Ludwig II, of the validity of Kölbl's radical economic theories. Given Wagner's dependence on the goodwill and financial support of the king, anything that was potentially going to damage this was never going to receive Wagner's support.

The autograph of this letter could not be consulted by the modern edition of Wagner's letters, Sämtliche Briefe, whose text differs very slightly in a few places in matters of orthography from the original.