My dearest friend,
Do not be angry with me because I am so late in answering your last letter. I had to see to the return of the manuscript entrusted to me, and this I was unable to do sooner. Your letter of October 22nd, together with the manuscript, did not reach me here till November 8th, via Berlin. As you wanted your manuscript back by November 10th, I must assume that some delay had taken place which you had not foreseen. I return herewith the French original, and in a few days I shall send the translation, which by then will have received its proper form.
Dear friend, your article has impressed me in a grand, elevating, stirring manner. That I have succeeded in thus acting upon you by my artistic work, that you are inclined to devote no small part of your extraordinary gift to opening, not only an external, but an internal path to my movement, this fills me with the deepest and most joyous emotion. I feel as if in us two men had met who had proceeded from the two most distant points in order to penetrate to the core of art, and who now, in the joy of their discovery, fraternally clasped hands. This joy alone enables me to accept your admiring exclamations without bashfulness, for I feel that when you praise my gifts and my achievements you express thereby only your joy at having met me at the core of art. Be thanked for the pleasure you have thus given me. I shall say something more about the translation when I send it to you, which, as I mentioned before, will be in a few days.
I have also read your feuilleton in Journal des Débats. Your restless energy in serving me I can only compare with the spirit in which you do it. Indeed, dear, good Liszt, I owe it to you that soon I shall be able once more to be entirely an artist. I look upon this final resumption of my artistic plans to which I now shall turn as one of the most decisive moments in my life. Between the musical execution of my Lohengrin and that of my Siegfried there lies for me a stormy, but, I feel convinced, a fruitful world. I had to abandon the entire life lying behind me, to bring into full consciousness everything dawning in it, to conquer any rising reflection by its own means, that is, by the most thorough entering into its subject, in order to throw myself once more with clear and cheerful consciousness into the beautiful unconsciousness of artistic creation. The winter I shall spend in completing this abandonment. I want to enter a new world unburdened, free, and happy, bringing nothing with me but a glad artistic conscience.
My work on The Essence of Opera, the last fruit of my contemplation, takes larger dimensions than I at first expected. If I show that music, the woman, becomes co-parent with the poet, the man, I must take care that this splendid woman is not given over to the first comer who desires her, but only to the man who longs for woman with true, irresistible love. The necessity of this union with the full power of music desired by the poet himself I was unable to prove by abstract aesthetic definitions alone, which generally are not understood and remain without effect. I had to derive that necessity with tangible distinctness from the state of modern dramatic poetry, and I hope I shall fully succeed. When I have finished this book, I intend, provided I can find a publisher, to bring out my three romantic opera-poems, with a preface introducing them and explaining their genesis. After that, to clear off all remains, I should collect the best of my Paris writings of ten years ago, including my Beethoven novelette, in a perhaps not unamusing volume; in it those who take an interest in me might study the beginning of my movement. In this manner I should get to the spring pleasantly and in an easy frame of mind, and should then work at my Siegfried without interruption and complete it. Give your blessing to this. I recently had a letter from a friend in Paris who witnessed several rehearsals of the Tannhäuser overture under Seghers's direction. He has completely satisfied me that the performance is carefully prepared, and that the understanding of the public will be aided as much as possible by a programme taken from your article upon my opera. In spite of this, I am very doubtful whether in the most favourable case I shall derive any benefit from it.
My request to you to accept my poem of Wieland you apparently have not quite understood. It is a sincere wish and request. Your present and imminent occupations might delay the fulfillment of my wish, which, however, would become impossible only if my sketch did not inspire you with the desire to complete it. In that case please be frank with me. If you intend, however late, to finish Wieland, I will undertake its proper versification.
Richard Wagner
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 50