A point in your letter obliges me to write to you sooner than I would have done had I been writing to you at length as was originally my intention. And yet it is all the better that I should be brief. I might write as fully as I liked and yet not be able to tell you what I most wish to say, namely, to convey the impression your songs have made on me. They place the prospect of your visit before me anew. I cling to that. Do contrive to come soon. I want really to get to know you; your songs have awakened in me the longing to do so. They have made very clear to me, too, that which is the main thing in all art: the artistic individuality, or, better, the Man. All other impressions are derived solely from form, style, and the ordinary kinds of pleasure, or lack of pleasure, in works of art, particularly contemporary intercourse between artists, and are almost wholly a matter of technique. If I set out to write to you I too should almost involuntarily dwell solely on technique, enter into questions of the relationship of verse to melody, of the poem to the tone-poem, of the poetry to the music.
I have been in consuming, burning need of some impression to banish my loneliness and fill me with new fresh matter of interest. As I could not hope for this from the people about me I sought it despairingly in literature without discovering a trace of it. Now you have given it to me and most heartily I thank you. Instead of criticising I am always asking simply, What can he look like? How does he speak? I wonder whether he sings his songs well? I count tremendously on that. I'll tell you what, best of friends! Show me the dear man who has made these songs. Come very soon to see me. Then, if you like, we can criticise each other; you have nothing to fear.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 241