Dear Franz,
Let me thank you today by a few lines for your last letter. I cannot get on with writing to you any longer; nothing occurs to me but my sorrow at your disappearance and my desire to have you again soon and for a long time. All else scarcely moves me, and business relations between us have very little charm for me. The only thing I can think of is seeing you again in the present year. Give me a rendezvous in Paris after the Carlsruhe festival. In any case, I shall send my wife to Carlsruhe, so that she may bring back a taste of you.
Almost my only object in writing to you is to ask you to forward the enclosed letter to L. Kohler. I know neither his title nor his address. You might also apologize to him for this very letter, which, I believe, is written in a terribly bad and confused style. The foolish man wants to hear something from me about his book, but as soon as I bend my head a little towards theory, the nerves of my brain begin to ache violently, and I feel quite ill. I can and will theorize no longer, and he is not my friend who would lure me back to that cursed ground. Pereant all X. and X. if they know of nothing better than this eternal confused speculating about art! Here I live in a wild solitude, ice and snow around me. The day before yesterday we roamed for half a day over glaciers. Herwegh must put up with it. I shall not release him from my net; he must work. He swore yesterday that he had the poem for you in his head. Good luck! Get me your medallion, you wicked man. I must have it at once. As to the rest, do with me what you like. About the sending of the parts and score to Carlsruhe I await your instructions. I assume that you received my letter from Coire. I am almost annoyed that you have had intercourse with X.; these people are not worth looking after. Be sure that nothing satisfactory will come of it; we must have whole men or none at all, no half ones; they drag us down: we shall never drag them up.
Richard Wagner
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 123