Dear Kietz,
I thank you very much for your letter, but not for sending my old clothes, which cost me 6 frs. . . . But I found no letter with the clothes!! You didn't understand my reminder to write me: when hell breaks loose in your home, I certainly want some sign of life from you, do you understand? Your great and unctuous litany pleased me very much and amused me in many ways: especially good was the musical composition which the magic of events conjured from your fantasy. For the rest, permit me to refrain from chattering about politics and other things of the kind. My entire politics consists of nothing but the bloodiest hatred for our whole civilization, contempt for all things deriving from it, and a longing for nature. This, of course, can't be understood by a man who felt so enchanted with the industrial exhibition. Well, now you have that exhibition, an exhibition on the pillory, with all your industrial workers. I must now atone for thinking so highly of workers as workers. With all their clamor about labor, they are the most miserable of slaves whom anybody may pocket who promises them a lot of "work" at the moment. It all stems from our servile attitude; no one in all France knows that we are human, except perhaps Proudhon, and even he not quite clearly! But in all of Europe I prefer dogs to those doglike men. Yet I don't despair of a better future, only the most terrific and destructive Revolution could make our civilized beasts "human" again.
I am now giving much thought to America! Not because I would expect to find the right things there, but because there it is easier to plant them.
Have you received the Three Opera Poems with the preface from Härtel?
Soon now I mean to begin my great Nibelungen trilogy, and I shall perform it first on the banks of the Mississippi.
Otherwise, things are going well enough. If you would come and visit us! I would surely provide the traveling money. Here you'd have to paint my ugly face in oils for my friends. But first you must do Johanna, blessed by heaven, who is so kind as not even to reply when I write to her. Farewell, old chap! Warm greetings from Minna. If you like the preface, tell me. Adieu!
Your
R. W.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 112