Upon mature consideration I take the liberty of offering you the score of my Lohengrin for publication. My operas in themselves have not had a wide circulation through the theatres and at the moment have practically vanished from the stage. My latest opera has been produced in Weimar alone, through Liszt's energetic interest in me, and then but imperfectly. For many reasons it is unlikely that my operas will become more widely popular in the theatres in the immediate future.
In view of these facts you would necessarily, from the purely business standpoint, give me an unfavourable answer, of which I should have been so certain beforehand that I should have thought my request ridiculous were I not in a position to support it on quite other grounds. A serious and judicial survey of our public dramatic music and its dependent literature must awake a doubt in any honourable artist as to whether it is a field which can be further developed with any success. He is more likely to become convinced that a crop of the most utter artistic worthlessness is ripening upon it, and that it is becoming increasingly impossible for any honour-loving man to have any connection with it whatsoever. In aspiring minds this observation will be followed by the hope that this corruption may yet be checked by a radical improvement, a much to be desired ennobling of this branch of art. To further this with all his power is the impulse of every soul who is unwilling to drift to ruin in unmanly inactivity. I may say that I have done what I could as an artist in this direction. The greater the sacrifices I had to make for my artistic faith, the firmer and more unshakable did that faith become in me. In this faith, and because of these struggles, I created works of art which convinced all who studied them attentively of the truth and usefulness of my efforts.
Many and those not the least worthy encourage me to pursue my road, thorny as it now is, because it must show to my brothers in art, too, the way of salvation. Now, however, I stand alone and my health, vehemently assailed, makes me doubt with reason whether my life will be long. I should naturally prefer not to leave it to chance that my ripest artistic works are preserved for the use of seekers after knowledge. By way of literary publication, however, I have good reason to hope for a circulation which promises to assist the spread of knowledge of my works in general. In spite of the almost total disappearance of my operas from the theatre, I learn from Dresden, to my no small surprise, that there is a wide and growing demand for the same, and that the sale of those which have appeared in print is becoming better and better. I confess that the discovery of this almost unheard-of phenomenon has borne such strong testimony to the sound foundation of my hopes that it has actually encouraged and instigated me to contemplate the publication of my Lohengrin.
It would be a gracious act on your part, worthy of your high culture and character, if you could consider venturing on an undertaking which would mean a present sacrifice and only later a perhaps very gradual success. But perhaps it is just herein that you would find an outlet for your zeal for a good standard of taste in art, which you, in your position as a music publisher, must frequently find yourself obliged to curb through the conflict between the public taste and your private judgment. At the same time you would be doing an act of neighbourliness and humanity to me if, by acceding to my request, you would afford me a longed-for opportunity of acquitting myself of a money debt to you. The discharge of this without some such expedient seems to me in my present situation to fade farther and farther into the distance. I would gladly accept the cancelling of this debt as sole honorarium.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 199