Student in a strange city
he asks to be directed
to a café. Now he sees
sequins, gauze, feminine forms –
no tables, just couches, doors,
and those insinuous shades
patiently waiting. Also
a piano. He goes to it,
sits, and plays from memory
a Tristan duet – music
that is unlocking his soul,
teaching it to speak and sing.
The chords surge to their climax
of sex, then death. He gets up,
explains the mistake, thanks them
for polite applause, and leaves.
Affairs of state weigh heavy.
His wedding to the Duchess
Sophie is again put off.
His Ministers, the papers,
the people, complain of his
gifts to ungrateful Wagner
is quarrelsome, difficult,
ever in need. Forgetting
promises made to himself
Ludwig indulges a taste
for hussars, stable-boys, grooms –
writes desperately to Wagner
proposing abdication
‘to be with you for ever’.
The reply is not unkind
but the king understands it.
He wants to punish Wagner
but how and not harm also
that music he loves more than
life itself? In the dark hours
he hears the Rhinedaughters’ song
and longs for death by water.
News from Dresden catches him
in Marseilles. Minna is dead.
He sends instructions for her
burial. He will not attend.
There is Die Meistersinger
to complete. An infected
finger gives him pain. And then
a wife abandoned in life
in death should not be reclaimed.
Returned to Geneva he learns
griefs and remorse. Next morning
the dog is dug up. Weeping,
distraught, the Master gives him
a collar worthy of such a
faithful friend; also a fine
silk coverlet. Reburied
under a suitable tree
Pohl will have a monument
in Jura stone. Days follow
of unaccountable tears.
Die Meistersinger resumes.
He dreams of Minna. She smiles.
Music was my God, Wagner
and Lizst the Saints. I married
Cosima, daughter of Liszt,
and conducted for Wagner.
How far does loyalty go?
Here at Tribschen by the lake
preparing Meistersinger
for Munich, I learn my wife
is pregnant – and not to me.
She used to fear my rages.
No more. This truth I wanted
not to know, turns me to stone.
Enslaved now to her pity,
double slave to his music –
lift a moment as a phrase
floats down from the music room
where the great man is working.
Intelligent devotion –
that is what I lose in her.
That is what the Master gains.
‘If our fake Abbé bangs out
one more Ave Maria
or another Mephisto
Waltz, I swear I’ll go insane.’
‘How can you speak so cruelly
of my father?’ ‘The father
who abandoned you, yet kept
you and your mother apart?’
‘My parents’ passion was grand –
it matched his fame and her rank.
So did their hate. He asked once
“Are we dining or weeping?”
But my father loves …’ ‘He loves
nothing but the Roman Church
and his horrible Princess.’
‘Richard, he loves your music.’
‘Alas, I cannot love his.’
‘You called him a great artist,
said he’d initiated
a new epoch in music.’
Passion’s advocate who fears
his client, he turns his back
at last on Wagner. Requests
to come again to Wahnfried
he ignores. He travels south
away from the rain, away
from the loud tread of the gods
into that region where man,
godless, might govern himself
under the dance of the stars.
‘What is good is light,’ he writes
‘and runs on delicate feet’ –
yet he weeps hearing the music
that once was ‘heaven on earth’,
weeps recalling their brilliant
conversation and laughter.
But it’s Cosima, her eyes,
voice, he will remember when
madness comes, babbling of her
even at the brink of death.
‘I am a Jew. Please save me,’
he writes, and Wagner responds.
Eleven years he spends in
the ‘Niebelung Chancellery’
in the evenings playing Bach,
Beethoven, Liszt. Playing whist!
‘Why does he stay?’ Cosima
asks; but when he leaves, Wagner
calls him back. ‘Herr Rub’ in her
diaries. And then ‘Malvolio’
and ‘the Israelite’. Insults
there are, but also purpose,
excitement, talk. And music –
such music! Walking one day
they meet a stone-breaker. ‘Why,’
the Master asks ‘does he not
see me, yet greets you warmly?’
And Rubinstein: ‘I give him
a coin sometimes.’ Cosima
takes note. The Jew gives money!
At Wagner’s death he will lose
his Star, his reason for life.
Once more Death’s conscript, this time
he will answer the summons.
That morning ‘making’ (as he
said) ‘the two-headed eagle’
she’d felt they were one body.
Now in the palace gardens
of their neighbour and patron
their accord was of the mind.
but he pointed through the trees
to the tomb already built
that would house them both, as if
death alone, or God in death
could make their union perfect –
and indeed when the day came
she pressed herself against him
hour after hour, believing
she too should have died. Decades
would pass before she joined him.
This morning his music floats
from Wahnfried across the lawns.
The palace grounds are a park.
Silent, a stream glides under
trees and bridges, past man-made
islands and moss-green marble.
Flowers are laid at their tomb
on which no word is engraved.