And lower down:  “Wagner has something singularly attractive to me, and if we both have asperities, those asperities dovetail into each other:” 

[drawing]

(Berlioz’s drawing is more brilliant than mine.)

Many thanks for your Dante letter.  By way of answer, I hope to show you the first half of my work at Zurich, together with some other things which will illustrate my aims to you more distinctly than anything I could tell you.

During the next few weeks I shall have to work at my “Prometheus” choruses, which I want to publish soon, and for that purpose I must write an entirely new score.  For in the year 1850, when I composed this work, I had too little time (scarcely a month), and was too much occupied by the “Lohengrin” rehearsals to give it the necessary finish.  I have now kept in view the means of performance more than before, and although the design and the conception remain essentially unchanged, the whole thing will have a better appearance.  It is a similar process as in sculpture, when the artist works in marble.  Before the performance a symphonic, and still more, a dramatic work exists, so to speak, only in Clay.  I could easily illustrate this comparison by the new score of your “Faust” overture, and by some of the changes you have made in the “Flying Dutchman.”  Wait a little, dearest Richard, and you will see what a lot of stuff, and how much material for conversation I shall bring with me.  The end of last week I spent in Dresden, where I called upon our friends, the Ritters.  Sascha Ritter, our Weymar Court musician, has been blessed with a little daughter, whose god-father I shall have the honour to be.  His mother-in-law has been staying here for some weeks, and Johanna Wagner is expected in September.

Our theatrical affairs are in a critical condition.  The Intendant, Herr von Beaulieu, is going to leave, and the artistic director, Marr, is also said to have sent in his resignation.  I do not trouble myself about these matters, and look forward with perfect peace of mind to the solution of these somewhat unimportant questions.

Gutzkow’s call to Weymar, which the papers announced several times, is not in itself unlikely, but will probably be delayed a little, as nothing definite has, as yet, been done.

Farewell, and set to work at your “Valkyrie.”  Go up your mountains, and bring the very skies down to your music.  In September, or at the latest, in October, we shall meet.

Your

F. L.

Your kindness and friendship for Klindworth have obliged me particularly, and I ask you to continue them.

Weymar, July 11th, 1855.

P.S.—­I shall remain here all the summer.

193.

Seelisberg, Canton Uri, July 22nd, 1855.

Dearest friend,

I think of nothing now but our meeting and being together.  I am glad you did not come sooner, because at present I should be able to show you very little of the “Valkyrie,” and I am pleased therefore to have a good deal of time for the completion of the score.  By November I shall have finished, at least, the first two acts, even the clean copy of them.