After the disastrous Tannh?user performances in March 1861, Wagner fluctuated for a while between Paris, Karlsruhe and Vienna, at length settling down on the 14th August in the last-named city, where it was proposed to produce Tristan. Minna had gone to Soden for a cure on the 10th July: from there she went on to Dresden once more.[203] In Vienna Wagner had the loan of Dr. Standhartner's house for some weeks during the physician's absence. His wants were attended to by a "pretty niece" of Standhartner's.[204] This pretty niece was one Seraphine Mauro. According to Kapp,[205] "Wagner was not insensible to so much beauty in his daily surroundings, and his 'dear little doll' [Puppe], as he always called Seraphine, did not let him sigh in vain.... The suffering in this affair of Wagner's fell upon his friend Peter Cornelius, who ... had lost his heart to the beautiful Seraphine some time before."
wagner
Standhartner having returned to Vienna at the end of September, Wagner had to leave his comfortable quarters, and as there seemed no prospect of an early performance of Tristan, and life at a hotel was expensive, he accepted an invitation from the Wesendoncks to meet them in Venice. He remained there only four days—"four miserable11 days" he calls them.[206] How unbridgeable was the gulf12 made between him and Minna by the memory of the Mathilde affair of three years before may be estimated from his letters to his wife of 19th October and 13th November 1861. The first is sensible and tender; he is full of pity for the poor suffering woman, and will gladly do anything in his power to alleviate13 her misery,—anything, that is, but give up the Wesendonck acquaintance. He still has plans for a reunion, and a quiet old age to be spent together. But as a preliminary to any rapprochement he insists, as he had always done on her consenting never again to mention the name of Mathilde, for whom, he declares, his passion has from beginning to end been absolutely pure. Of all the tragedies of Wagner's life this surely is the greatest, that his one truly noble love, the one that was so necessary to him as an artist, to which we owe Tristan and many of the finest moods of the Meistersinger and Parsifal, should have been the one to embitter1 his existence and his wife's beyond all hope of remedy while his less worthy14 attachments16 were either unknown to Minna or counted for little with her. With Wagner obstinately17 resolved not to give up the Wesendonck acquaintance, and Minna—blind to the ideal nature of the attachment15, and seeing it, in all probability, merely as another Laussot affair[207]—as obstinately bent18 on making the cessation of this acquaintance a condition of a full reconciliation19 with her husband, it was impossible that the breach20 between the two tortured and self-torturing souls should ever be healed. That Wagner dreaded21 giving Minna any cause to be reminded of Mathilde's name is evident from the sophisticated version he gives her of his Venice excursion, in his letter of 13th November 1861: we can only regard as a piece of well-meant fiction his story that Dr. Standhartner, having been summoned in haste, as deputy physician in ordinary, to attend the Empress of Austria in Venice, pressingly insisted upon Wagner accompanying him for his health's sake. "I returned early this morning. I hope it has done me good; at least I had no talking to do for several days, but only to go sight-seeing, which really benefited me." Not a word, it will be observed, as to having gone to Venice at the request of the Wesendoncks, or even as to their being in Venice at that time.
So matters drifted on in the old way until Wagner had settled down in Biebrich (end of February 1862), after yet another visit to Paris. He took with him the furniture that had been in their Paris house. Minna came to help in the unpacking22 and arranging. She remained with him a week. According to the account he gives in Mein Leben "the old scenes were soon renewed," Minna being angry at his having removed from the custom-house the articles he required for his new home, without awaiting for her arrival.[208] The real reason of their quarrel, however—concealed from us, as usual, in Mein Leben—was once more Frau Wesendonck. By a most unlucky coincidence a letter and a box arrived from Mathilde on the second and third days of Minna's visit. They were quite harmless,[209] but Minna would not listen to reason; she was more than ever convinced that her husband was carrying on another intrigue23 with Mathilde behind her back. It was enough, as poor Wagner says, to drive him out of his senses—the same scenes as four years before, the same invective24, word for word. Yet in spite of it all, once more the wretched pair began making plans for a home in common, Minna's importunities among the Dresden Government officials having made it possible for Wagner to obtain an amnesty by a formal petition to the King.
Biebrich remained his home until the autumn. He was working at the music of the Meistersinger, and perhaps, on the whole, not unhappy. He made several new friends, among them the actress Friederike Meyer—the sister of the Frau Dustmann who was to have "created" the part of Isolde in the Vienna production of Tristan—and a pretty and intelligent young girl, Mathilde Maier, the daughter of a deceased lawyer. The fire of his passion for Frau Wesendonck having already cooled, he fell in love with the gentle Mathilde Maier. Kapp conjectures25 that rumours26 of their "friendly relations" had come to Minna's ears, and that the renewed bitterness of her letters at this time decided27 Wagner to take the step that had long been urged upon him by his friends, and obtain a divorce from Minna. He commissioned his Dresden friend Dr. Pusinelli to sound Minna on the subject; she declined to oblige him.[210] His desire to marry Mathilde Maier, however, says Kapp, found a new and insurmountable obstacle. She was threatened with hereditary28 deafness; this, she thought, would unfit her to be the wife of a musician. "The full significance of this tragic29 love in Wagner's life cannot be estimated yet," says Kapp, "since the autobiography30 preserves complete silence on this matter, out of consideration for Cosima, and the large and carefully guarded collection of intimate documents from Wagner's hands that Mathilde left behind her will not be published during Cosima's life-time."[211]
Meanwhile his relations with Friederike Meyer—a lively actress-temperament—had become more and more friendly. When he left Biebrich for Vienna in November 1862, he was accompanied by Friederike, who had surrendered her engagement at the Frankfort theatre for his sake.[212] He soon became involved, as he tells us, in disagreements with his Isolde, Frau Dustmann, Friederike's sister. "It was impossible," he says, "to make her see how matters really stood; she regarded her sister as being involved in a liaison31, and cast out by her family,[213] so that Friederike's settling in Vienna was compromising for her."
We get a little light on the pair in an entry in the diary of Peter Cornelius under date 20th November 1862:
"We were at Wagner's. He gave a musical evening for his Fr?ulein Friederike M.... Her chambermaid was there as duenna. Friederike isn't so bad as they made out in Mainz; she isn't amiss as far as appearances go. She is intelligent, without making any attempt to thrust herself forward. She is not very pretty, but her face is animated32. Wagner behaved very properly and decently in her presence. If he really must have a liaison of this sort, it looks as if he would get on quite tolerably with this one."[214]
The liaison seems to have been in one way at least a harmful one for Wagner. Frau Dustmann was so angered at Friederike's association with him and at her attempt to procure33 an engagement at the Burg theatre that she cooled towards Tristan. This, says Kapp, was the real cause of the failure to produce the opera in Vienna, not, as has hitherto been supposed, the difficulty the singers found with the work.
Friederike soon passed out of his life. With his liking34 for women's society, however, it was impossible for him to live alone for long. We may believe him when he tells Minna (December 27, 1862), "I am living an utterly35 wretched life, daily, hourly—and am never, never happy."[215] He is busy with concerts and with the Tristan rehearsals36; but he is getting no sleep, has palpitations of the heart, and is "completely knocked to pieces." After his Russian concert tour he settles in Penzing, a suburb of Vienna (May 12, 1863), in order to continue work at the Meistersinger. He has apparently given up all idea of a reunion with Minna. He tells us that about this time he suffered a great deal of trouble on her account: "she reproached me bitterly for everything I did."[216] He kept, he says, to his resolution of the previous year; he wrote instead to Minna's daughter Nathalie, who was still living with her, and still under the impression that she was Minna's sister.[217] The idea occurred to him of getting Mathilde Maier to take charge of his Penzing household. Apparently the proposal created some commotion37 in the Maier circle. Mathilde, he had thought, "would be sensible enough to take my meaning correctly, without being shocked. No doubt I was right in that supposition; but I had not taken sufficient account of her mother and her bourgeois38 surroundings in general. She seemed to have been thrown into the utmost excitement by my invitation; and her friend Luise Wagner, with bourgeois sense and precision, gave me the good advice first of all to obtain a divorce from my wife, and then everything else would easily be arranged. Greatly shocked at this, I at once withdrew my invitation as having been made without proper consideration."[218] Perhaps he really was shocked, though we have to remember that these memoirs39 were dictated40 to Cosima, and he would probably be disposed to paint himself in the most favourable41 colours. But the whole passage, ambiguous as it is, in a way that the student of Mein Leben becomes accustomed to, points quite clearly to the belief in the Maier circle that his relations with Mathilde were very intimate.
Feminine society was an absolute necessity to him at all times, and now, perhaps, more than ever, for his life was a round of anxieties and his health was wretched. His lonely abode42 was brightened for a time by "a maiden43 of seventeen years, of an irreproachable44 family." According to his account,[219] she was bored and wanted to get back to the town again. He got rid of her with as much regard for her feelings as possible, and her place was taken by an elder sister. "She is more experienced," he tells Frau Wesendonck, "staid (gemessen), seems gentle, and is not unagreeable." "Eccentric as the episode may seem in itself," says Mr. Ashton Ellis,[220] "it disposes of the ridiculous legend—founded on a Viennese dressmaker's bills—that the writer used to dress himself in female garments. Long ago I had been struck by the 'we' in one of the crumbs45 of that correspondence flaunted46 by addle-brained purveyors of gossip, and felt more inclined to credit Hanslick's story of 'a pretty ballet-dancer'; but the amazing innocence47 of the whole arrangement is proved alike by its narration48 to Elisabeth and her unrebuking answer."
Whether the purveyors of gossip were addle-brained or not, gossip there certainly was: and apparently there was some fire to account for the smoke. That this second serving maiden, says Kapp, "had a better understanding [than her sister] of the position she was intended for, and gave Wagner thorough satisfaction," is evident from the following love letter, addressed to her after he had been away from Penzing some time on a concert tour:
"Dear little Marie,—I shall be home again next Wednesday. I shall be at the Northern station in Vienna at half-past seven in the evening. Franz [his man servant] must be there punctually with the carriage, and he must also have what is necessary for the trunk. Now, my best sweetheart, have everything in the house very nice, so that I can get a cosy49 rest, which I very much need. Everything must be quite tidy, and—well warmed. See that everything is very nice in the lovely study; if it is hot, open it a little, so that the study may be warm; and perfume it nicely: buy the best bottles of scent50, so as to give it a nice odour. Ach Gott! how delighted I am to be able to rest again with you there. (I hope the rose-coloured pants are ready?) Aye, aye! You must be very pretty and charming; I deserve to have a thoroughly51 good time once more. At Christmas I will arrange the Christmas tree: and then, my sweetheart, you will get all sorts of presents. My arrival need not be made known to everybody; but Franz must tell the barber and the hairdresser to come at half-past nine on Thursday morning. So: Wednesday evening at half-past seven in Vienna, and soon after in Penzing. I leave it wholly to yourself as to whether you will meet me at the station. Perhaps it will be nicer if you meet me first in the house, in the warm rooms. I shall probably need only the coupée. Kind greetings to Franz and Anna [Franz's wife]. Tell them to have everything thoroughly nice. Many kisses to my sweetheart. Au revoir!" [221]
This, it need hardly be said, is scarcely the sort of letter one writes to a servant who is no more than a servant.
In July 1863 he gives two concerts in Pesth, where he seems to have been smitten52 by the charms of a young Hungarian singer who greatly pleased him by her renderings53 of some of Elsa's music, and still more by her evident incandescence54 for himself.
There is no mention of this young lady in Mein Leben, but Wagner tells Mathilde about her in the same letter (3rd August 1863) in which he speaks of the engagement of Marie as successor to her sister. "I was quite touched at meeting with something so pure and unspoiled for my music; and the good child, on her side, seemed so moved by myself and my music that for the first time in her life she really felt. The expression of these feelings was indescribably charming and touching55, and many might have thought that the maiden had conceived an ardent56 love for me:[222] so now I have to 'write' to her as well." He evidently takes a sort of impish pleasure in thus piquing57 the curiosity of his old love and "Muse58." He adds "See, I am telling you all the good I can; but I really don't know of anything more, and I am not even sure whether you will credit this last tale to me as something 'good.'"
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1
embitter
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| v.使苦；激怒 | |
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embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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5
appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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7
confiding
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| adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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alleviate
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| v.减轻，缓和，缓解(痛苦等) | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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attachments
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| n.（用电子邮件发送的）附件( attachment的名词复数 )；附着；连接；附属物 | |
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obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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reconciliation
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| n.和解，和谐，一致 | |
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breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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22
unpacking
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| n.取出货物，拆包[箱]v.从（包裹等）中取出（所装的东西），打开行李取出( unpack的现在分词 )；拆包；解除…的负担；吐露（心事等） | |
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intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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invective
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| n.痛骂，恶意抨击 | |
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conjectures
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| 推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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31
liaison
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| n.联系，（未婚男女间的）暖昧关系，私通 | |
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animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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procure
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| vt.获得，取得，促成；vi.拉皮条 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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rehearsals
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| n.练习( rehearsal的名词复数 )；排练；复述；重复 | |
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commotion
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| n.骚动，动乱 | |
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bourgeois
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| adj./n.追求物质享受的(人)；中产阶级分子 | |
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memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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40
dictated
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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41
favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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42
abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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44
irreproachable
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| adj.不可指责的，无过失的 | |
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45
crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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46
flaunted
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| v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的过去式和过去分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
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47
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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48
narration
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| n.讲述，叙述；故事；记叙体 | |
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49
cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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50
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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51
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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52
smitten
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| 猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去分词 ) | |
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53
renderings
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| n.（戏剧或乐曲的）演奏( rendering的名词复数 )；扮演；表演；翻译作品 | |
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54
incandescence
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| n.白热，炽热；白炽 | |
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55
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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56
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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57
piquing
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| v.伤害…的自尊心( pique的现在分词 )；激起（好奇心） | |
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muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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