Re: When was Wagner at his most suicidal?

Derrick Everett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 10:00:22 -0800, Cruz Tijerina wrote:
> 
> > I stand corrected you are absolutely right. Minna was still alive
> > although she hardly had any contact with Richard. You did not answer my
> > question though... do you think that is when he was at his most
> > suicidal?
> > 
> > 
> I am not sure that Wagner ever was suicidal.  Certainly he mentions a
> desire for death many times in his letters, especially in those written to
> Franz Liszt and Mathilde Wesendonk respectively.  It is possible that in
> his worst despair he contemplated suicide but it is most likely that these
> thoughts would soon be dismissed.  He was of course a disciple of
> Schopenhauer, who had taught that suicide was the ultimate assertion of
> the will and therefore no kind of solution at all.
> 
> Wagner's situation and state of mind during the spring of 1864 have been
> described by those friends who supported him, emotionally and financially,
> during the darkness before dawn.
> 
> After the attempted reconciliation with Minna -- the "ten days of hell" --
> and with the growing financial crisis that Wagner faced in 1864, he was in
> dire straits, not least emotionally.  Wagner fled from his creditors in
> Vienna, for the second time in his life fearing imprisonment for debt, and
> took refuge with his friend the novelist Eliza Wille at Mariafeld.  Her
> account of his visit can be found in her, "Erinnerungen an Wagner", in the
> chapter headed "Wagner bei Uns"; part of which has been translated into
> English by Stewart Spencer and appears in his "Wagner Remembered", pages
> 154-8.  Although Wagner spoke to Frau Wille of his misery, there is no
> indication that he was suicidal.
> 
> When the bills began to catch up with him, Wagner left Mariafeld and to
> meet up with Wendelin Weissheimer in Stuttgart.  Weissheimer's account of
> this period can also be found in "Wagner Remembered", pages 158-162. He
> describes how Wagner wanted to Weissheimer to accompany him into hiding in
> the mountains, where they both could work without being disturbed by
> Wagner's creditors, and of course where Weissheimer could pay for their
> food and lodging.  The account ends with the arrival of the secretary to
> King Ludwig, bringing a diamond ring, a portrait of the king, and an end
> to Wagner's financial predicament.

Also mentioned in some accounts are a few situation-comedy attempts by
Wagner to evade the secretary, thinking he was a creditor or worse.