165 To Dr. Adolf Stern in Dresden
[Poet and man of letters, now professor at the Polytechnikum at Dresden, a member of the Committee of the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein since 1867.]
Very Dear Sir and Friend,
A long and protracted illness has kept me in bed for a fortnight past—and I owe you many apologies for my delay in sending you my warmest thanks for the very kind remembrance with which you adorned the 22nd of October. The beautiful poem, so full of meaning, and soaring aloft with its delicately powerful flight, goes deeply to my heart, and my dreams hear the charm of your poetry through Lehel’s magic horn tones! Perhaps I shall be able shortly to tell you what I have heard, when the disjointed sounds have united in shaping themselves harmoniously into an artistic whole, from which a second part of my Symphonic Poem “Hungaria” might well be formed.
Meanwhile I have ventured to send your poem to a couple of my friends in Pest, who will delight in it like myself.
In spite of my illness I am spending glorious days here with Wagner, and am satiating myself with his Nibelungen world, of which our business musicians and chaff-threshing critics have as yet no suspicion. It is to be hoped that this tremendous work may succeed in being performed in the year 1859, and I, on my side, will not neglect anything to forward this performance as soon as possible—a performance which certainly implies many difficulties and exertions. Wagner requires for the purpose a special theater built for himself, and a not ordinary acting and orchestral staff. It goes without saying that the work can only appear before the world under his own conducting; and if, as is much to be wished, this should take place in Germany, his pardon must be obtained before everything.—I comfort myself with the saying, “What must be will be!” And thus I expect to be also standing on my legs again soon, and to be back in Weymar in the early days of December. It will be very kind of you if you will not let too long a time elapse without coming to see me. For today accept once more my heartfelt thanks, and the assurance of sincere friendship of your
F. Liszt
Zurich, November 14th, 1856