My health is not of the best. In particular, this everlasting life of the imagination, without any satisfying reality, is so injurious to my mind and nerves that I dare only work with lengthy pauses and at long intervals if I am to avoid falling into a permanently invalid condition. It was in such a condition that your last letter found me. Its contents, taken together with your situation, formed a fairly striking contrast to my circumstances and my mood. It only convinced me of what I have often been made to feel, that a half-and-half freedom is more discouraging and oppressive than complete subjection. My journalistic works were witnesses to my lack of freedom as an artist. I only planned them under great pressure and had nothing less in mind than the writing of books. Had it been otherwise you would probably not have had to complain so much of my style. But my journalistic period is over now. It would assuredly kill me if I were to continue it. Instead, I am now carrying out a big artistic scheme, the completion of the versification of three dramas with a big separate prelude which I shall next set to music and produce some day, God knows when, where and how. The whole will be called The Ring of the Nibelungs. I am thinking of putting the poem before my friends in print some time at the end of this year. My health being what it is now, it will naturally take time to carry out the whole, and for the present I must put the date of performance in a fabulous future.
When you are again allowed to occupy yourself with literature I should like you to tell me if I may send you books from time to time. You would find Feuerbach's works uncommonly stimulating reading and I should like to introduce you to a poet whom I have recently recognised as the greatest of all poets, the Persian poet Hafiz, of whom there is now a very enjoyable German version by Daumer. Having got to know this poet, I am really appalled by the poor appearance we make with our pompous European intellectual culture, compared with what the East has produced in such security, exaltation, joy and peace of the spirit. You would probably share my amazement. World disintegration is the only good thing I can see in recent European developments, whereas I should like to regard the phenomenon of this oriental writer as showing a way for the individual, though the time is not yet.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 225