I have just had a long argument with you, and Lohengrin is still the subject. I have returned to it again with a perfectly open mind, and I have come to an understanding with myself. I have been contemplating my work, after a lapse of time, as far as possible as an unprejudiced stranger, and its poetic intention seems to me to run thus:
Atonement for Elsa's lapse can only be made through her punishment, and seldom has a fault been linked with a more logical and inevitable punishment than is here expressed in the parting. Neither chastisement nor death can form that punishment. Every other form of punishment would be arbitrary and would arouse indignation; but the punishment of separation, the hardest of all, indeed appears inevitable and does not appear too hard, for it is the most just, the most logical. Elsa has forfeited Lohengrin; their union cannot stand, for once Elsa has asked the question they are thereby cut off from each other. The parting, the idea of the parting, seemed to me the very heart and essence of the whole matter from my first acquaintance with the story, and having run through other possible solutions I return with ever-increasing certainty to this parting. If it were to be omitted it would mean a complete transformation of the entire subject; only the most banal superficialities would be left.
The symbolic meaning of the fable I hold to be that contact of the supernatural with human nature cannot last. The moral would seem to be that God, I mean the Christian God, would do better to withhold supernatural revelations from us, since he may not annul the laws of nature, and nature, human nature in this instance, revenges itself and thus brings the revelation to naught. This seems to me to be the meaning of most of those marvellous sagas which were not made by priests. What happened to Semele when Zeus approached her?
But the question still remains as to whether or not my poem, conceived on this basis, is dramatically conclusive and effective, and this was what chiefly concerned you. I say that I do not doubt it, though I know it is a daring thing to leave the self-evident conclusion of a dramatic action wholly to the imagination of an audience as is done here when Lohengrin departs. The endeavour must be, therefore, to make the ultimate moment of parting appear as a positive act, and this can be done by making the ultimate fate of both the separated lovers perfectly plain to the audience. Your doubts were of great assistance to me, for they drew my attention very forcibly to the necessity of making Lohengrin's share in the tragic exit clearer than it was as it first stood.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 124