Day by day I go from bad to worse. I am leading an indescribably worthless existence. Of true delight in life I know nothing at all; it is only as the artist that I can still live on, and in him my whole man is swallowed up. And just look at the environment in which I, as an artist, am living now. Do you know Zurich? I go mad here; nothing else is possible. I might still find a respite were Germany open to me again. Here I am bound to come to ruin soon, and everything will come too late. What is to be done now? Am I to supplicate the King of Saxony, or rather beg from those vermin his ministers? Am I to confess myself submissive and penitent? Who could expect that of me? But is there not one among these princely personages who love my works who has enough sense of shame to perceive that it is unworthy, petty, mean and paltry to leave me in my present position, and who would accordingly undertake the trouble of extracting permission for my return to Germany, from the thankless royal couple of Saxony, without exacting abasement on my part? It seems there is not. No one has the slightest sense of shame now, least of all our art-loving princes. You, the best and dearest friend I have, you who are my prince and world and all in one, have pity on me.
But softly, softly. I want to write to you about the Faust Overture. You triumphantly detected me in a lie when I sought to hoax myself into thinking I had written an overture to Faust. You felt quite rightly what was wanting in it: it is Woman that is lacking. But perhaps you would leap to an understanding of my tone-poem if I were to call it Faust in Solitude. At the time I intended to write an entire Faust Symphony. The first part, the finished one, was just Faust alone, longing, despairing, cursing. The Feminine floats before him merely as the image of his own desires, but not in all its divine reality, and it is just this unsatisfying image of desire that he breaks to pieces in desperation. Not till the second movement was Gretchen, the Woman, to appear. I had already got the theme for her, but it was only a theme. I dropped the whole thing and I wrote my Flying Dutchman. There you have the whole explanation. If some last remnant of weakness and vanity makes me want to see the Faust composition not utterly wasted, I shall certainly have some remodelling to do, but only in the sphere of instrumental modulation; the theme you want cannot possibly be introduced; it would demand an entirely new composition which I have no desire to make. If I publish it I will, however, give it a proper title, Faust in Solitude, or The Lonely Faust, a tone-poem for the orchestra.
Last week I finished my new poems for the two Siegfrieds, but I must revise the two older pieces, Young Siegfried and Siegfried's Death, as considerable alterations have now become necessary. I shall not be quite finished before the end of the year. The full title is The Ring of the Nibelungs. What is to be the fate of this poem, the poem of my life and all that I am and feel, I cannot yet decide. But one thing is certain: if Germany is not very soon to be open to me again and if I am to be forced to continue my life as an artist without nourishment or stimulus, my mere animal instinct to live will drive me to abandon all art. What I shall do then to keep body and soul together I do not know, but I shall not make the music of the Nibelungs, and it would be inhuman to expect me to go on being the bond-slave of my art any longer.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 231