Alexander Müller has told me marvels about your performances of Lohengrin. Be ever assured of my warmest thanks. As to my new poem, The Ring of the Nibelungs, I am now regretting terribly that, for hard cash too, I had fifty copies of it printed. It is not only that I cannot prevent the book getting into the hands of totally unauthorised persons, but I now feel that even my friends ought not really to have this poem before it is set to music and I would almost add produced as well. I see more and more clearly that the work I have on hand is something which I ought to get done, and ought not to permit to be endlessly discussed. Instead of concentrating on the poem before them and on its purely poetic aspect, people are always seizing upon the purely technical aspect of a conjectured musical setting, as if such a poem only came into being to give the usual operatic composer occasion for a discharge of music instead of being, as it is, rooted and grounded in itself, in the life and the view of life of the poet, bringing to the musician a new subject to which, and in which, he must discover new music, that is, music suited to this subject and to this subject alone. Since, accordingly, the musical and also the scenic setting is necessarily my secret, nothing could be more distressing to me now than to have to hear this intimate artistic secret of mine discussed by others publicly, perhaps at last. In short, I wish I could recall all the copies I have given away. Only come and see me soon, and I will read it to you, sing what is already done and talk to you about it; after that you can take a copy away with you if you would like to have one. But I would rather do nothing to increase the misunderstandings which distress me. Please do not take this the wrong way.
You will be getting an alteration in the close of Tannhäuser from Dresden, according to which the corpse of Elizabeth does not appear, nor do the Landgrave and singers come on, but instead the younger pilgrims sing, as in the first version. All the rest remains, necessarily, the whole Venus incident up to the earlier close. The young pilgrims carry the budding staff in their midst. Previously the death of Elizabeth has been merely indicated by the light of torches on the Wartburg, tolling of bells and men's voices chanting from there, that is, from above. All the talk about the appearance of a corpse and prosaic calculations about the physical, anatomical and social possibilities of this burial of Elizabeth in so short a time have so disgusted me at last that I decided on this alteration, or reversion rather.
What is Joachim doing, the chosen one of Schumann? You ought to have come to Paris too. The experiences of that time have exalted me very much, and the child has become something high and holy to me. I and my composition live under her blessing now; I have never yet felt so well in music-making and this month I almost finished the first half of The Rhinegold, though unfortunately I was hindered by an illness, a violent cold and fever with its consequences. I am completely at sea about Karl Ritter. Each time I give him a rough or vigorous answer, I soon regret it heartily; but when I have almost come to the point of asking pardon, I always get something from him that turns me right round and makes me answer in the very tone I have just been sorry for, feeling that I had not handled him aright that way. The silly fellow never sees that if one of us is to be intensely irritable, it should certainly be I rather than he, by virtue of a thousand experiences and impressions. He pays me back for the expression of such wounded and tender susceptibilities by much greater irritability, and in this he is encouraged by his view of our relationship, for he regards himself as entirely on an equality with me. As regards this open claim to equality on his part, I fully assent to it as regards capacity and the like, indeed I would gladly put him high above me in these matters; but when he overlooks the vast and painfully acquired wealth of actual experience that necessarily gives infinitely greater weight to me than to him, it is bound in time to lead to ever-increasing error in all his dealings with me, even to the point of total misunderstanding of everything I say.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 249