I think now I shall be able gradually to withdraw from the theatre. From the first I regarded it purely as a school of conducting; for a moment, indeed, I hoped to make something more of it, but it has run to seed too completely. Nothing more can grow on this soil of ours. Money is the only power which might effect an ephemeral miracle, but, well, this power is otherwise engaged. This fellow Liszt is ever an amazing source of strength to me. To have become what he has become, after being what he was, is a thing that seldom happens. His friend has inquired of me about Wieland. I have made Liszt a present of it. Now and then I feel very happy just to be here in Switzerland. There is nowhere in the world now where I would rather make my home. My friends are thoroughly unaffected people, even when they are not something more as well. The other day I was at tea with some German professors resident here. Horror seized me and drove me back again with absolute yearning into the arms of my Swiss friends. I notice an immense inertia about them all. How well it is accounted for by the very air they breathe! At the moment I can think of nothing more idiotically disgusting than a German capital city.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 191