I have now got to know your Symphonic Poems well; they are the only music which occupies me at present, as I must not think of working during my cure. Every day I read through one score or another, just as I would read a poem, fluently and easily, and each time I feel as if I had dived down into some crystal water, alone, leaving the world behind and living my true life for an hour. Refreshed and strengthened I rise again and long for your presence.
Yes, my friend, you can do it, you can do it! Well, there is not much I can say about it; the noblest expressions might well seem a little trivial. Enough: soon you will come and bring my Dante with you. Lovely, glorious prospect! How I thank you! Yesterday I sent you a parcel; it contains the original scores of The Rhinegold and The Valkyrie, which are likely to meet with a curious fate now. Listen to me briefly!
I shall be lost and become incapable of going on with my work if I cannot eventually find the kind of dwelling I need, that is to say, a small house all to myself. For four years I have been trying in vain to realise this wish and nothing but the purchase of a plot of land and the building of a house for myself can give me what I long for. I have been brooding like a madman on how to make this possible and at last, a little while ago, it occurred to me to offer Hartel's my Nibelungs and get the requisite money from them. Well, they have told me that they are willing to do something unusual in order to get possession of my work, whereupon I have asked them to buy the two finished pieces at once, to expect Siegfried in the course of next year and Siegfried's Death at the end of 1858, in each instance paying me an honorarium, and to publish the whole work in 1859, the year of performance. Sheer despair has driven me to this; in this way Hartel's are to provide me with the means of purchasing a plot of land such as I want. If we agree, which must soon be decided, I shall have to deliver my two scores to them immediately. I am beginning more and more to regret my letter to the King of Saxony. The scandalous behaviour of the Saxon Government towards Semper really leads me to expect the worst scorn and derision. Well, do you come, and then I will gladly leave Saxony and all Germany alone for any length of time! If you put me in a really good humour, perhaps I will trot out my Victors for you, although the difficulty will be that whereas I have been carrying the idea of it about with me for a long time, the subject in which it is to be incorporated has only just come to me like a stroke of lightning, intensely clear and definite for me, but not yet in a manner suitable for communication. You must first have digested my Tristan, particularly the third act with the black flag and the white. After that, the Victors would become more intelligible.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 307