[...] And so we shall have completed our course of treatment in 4 days’ time, having by then spent five full weeks here! All the signs are that it has been a success both for myself & for Minna, whom, as usual, we have kept as far away as possible from all her acquaintances, since they have now become such a regular nuisance wherever we go; conversely, we have rarely been away from the forests & mountains. But my head was in a whirl as always, & it was in this frame of mind yesterday that I finished writing out a very full & detailed scenario for Lohengrin; I am delighted with the result, indeed, I freely admit that it fills me with a feeling of proud contentment. You know the worry that often used to beset me, that I should never again find a subject that approached my Tannhäuser in its warmth & uniqueness: - but the more familiar I have become with my new subject & the more profoundly I have grasped its central idea, the more it has dawned upon me how rich & luxurious the seed of this new idea is, a seed which has grown into so full & burgeoning a flower that I feel happy indeed in the knowledge that I possess it. In creating this work, my powers of invention & sense of formal structure have played their biggest part to date: the medieval poem which has preserved this highly poetical legend contains the most inadequate & pedestrian account to have come down to us, and I feel very fortunate to have satisfied my desire to rescue what by now is an almost unrecognizable legend from the rubble & decay to which the medieval poet had reduced the poem as a result of his inferior & prosaic treatment of it, & to have restored it to its rich & highly poetical potential by dint of my own inventiveness & reworking of it. - But quite apart from all this, how felicitous a libretto it has turned out to be! Effective, attractive, impressive & affecting in all its parts! - Johanna’s role in it - which is very important & in point of fact the principal role in the work - is bound to turn out the most charming & most moving in the world. - But enough of this. - Out of the abundance of the heart, etc.
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 70