Dear Liszt,
I am sending you herewith my latest piece of work which I have just completed: it is a revised version of the original text which I sent to Paris last week to be translated into French for the arts pages of the National. Whether it is to your liking, I do not know: but one thing I am certain of is that, to judge by your temperament, you and I are of the same mind. I hope you will find nothing in it of the political commonplaces, socialist rigmarole or personal insults which you warned me against: - but the fact that I see what I do see in the deepest recesses of the affair is attributable purely and simply to the circumstance that, as a result of my own artistic nature and the sufferings I have had to endure, my eyes have been opened in such a way that death alone will be able to close them again. Ahead of me I see either a totally useless existence or else the sort of activity that accords with my innermost nature, even though such activity may be practised far from the world of glitter: in the former instance I shall endeavour to bear in mind the need to be brief.
May I ask you to readdress the enclosed manuscript and accompanying letter and forward them to the publisher Otto Wigand in Leipzig: perhaps I shall succeed in deriving some small financial support from my inferior abilities as a writer.
I have had no news from my wife since my last letter to her which I posted at the same time that I assailed you with my recent petition; her silence causes me no little torment.
From a letter from Baron Schober to Eck in Zurich I discovered to my great delight that your prospects are excellent and that you are resolved to settle in Weimar for good. I presume that our splendid princess is equally pleased and in good spirits: God be praised! - Whether you should show her my manuscript, I do not rightly know: I appear here very much as a Greek, so much so that I could not rightly be converted to Christianity. But why do I prattle on as if you were not the people to understand me? Forgive me!
Fare you well, my dear and only friend! Think of me kindly!
Yours,
Richard Wagner.
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 93