[...] God only knows why, but I really cannot feel downhearted! Particularly since my wife is now here with me and I have no reason to worry about my livelihood for the next few months, I continue to feel as complacently self-satisfied as a dog when its master stops beating it. My only regret is that I have not done a stroke of work during the last few weeks: not until next week shall we move into a small apartment here which will enable me to have my own room for working in; until now I have had only a common-room in which to sit and get on with my scribblings, and it is to this circumstance that you must attribute the fact that I have satisfied your demand and prepared my nibelistic essay for publication, although I re-edited it extensively at the same time as copying it out, so that it may be of interest to you to compare the enclosed manuscript with the older version, whereby I would draw your attention in particular to the 3rd section about the Wibelungs and then to the 12th and final section about actual possessions, where you will be struck by my more economic handling of the material.
You will find the pamphlet enclosed herewith, and I would ask you to forward it to the publisher Wigand in Leipzig, together with the enclosed letter: the cost of forwarding them both will not, I trust, be exorbitant, but I would suggest that, in order to raise the sum, you should if necessary organize a subscription among the more radical members of the orchestra.
Wigand is already publishing another brochure of mine: Art & Revolution, of whose French fate in the National I have had no news at the time of writing. Get hold of this pamphlet as soon as it appears: it will be only the forerunner, - as soon as I can resume my work, I shall follow it up with a more detailed piece: the art-work of the future, - of which a third essay: the Artists of the Future will later form the conclusion. I shall refrain from giving you any information concerning the approximate content of these essays, since it is not something which can be given in approximate form, but only in its actual, complete form.
But it is absolutely necessary for me to write these essays and send them out into the world before I continue with my more immediate artistic creations: I myself and all who are interested in me as an artist must be forced once and for all to come to a precise understanding of the issues involved, otherwise we shall all spend the rest of our lives groping around in a loathsome world of half-lit forms, which is worse than a state of total obscurity in which the benighted traveller can see nothing at all but where he continues to clutch desperately and piously at long familiar objects to guide him on his way.
If all turns out as I hope it will, once I have finished these essays, I shall write the music for my Siegfried: I long to do so from the very depths of my soul. The same strength of feeling lies behind my desire to evade the operatic plans which have been foisted upon me against my will in Paris. Basically, it is Liszt who is to blame for setting me on this collision course. He’s a modern man of the world who may have many admirable qualities, but he loves me in a way which makes him want me to enjoy an enormous international success in Paris. Because of the need to think of earning my living, I did not reject the idea out of hand: I let him do as he liked with me, with the result, as I have already told you, I am now in the ridiculous predicament of having to decide between genuine offers of help from Paris and my own inner revulsion. [...]
[...] I want to be happy, and man can be happy only when he is free: but only that man is free who is what he can be and therefore what he must be. The man, therefore, who satisfies the inner necessity of his being is free, since he feels at one with himself, because everything he does is at one with his nature and his true needs: but the man who follows not his inner but some outer necessity obeys a coercive force, - he is unfree, a slave, unhappy. But the free man scorns the oppression of outer coercion, as long as we do not sacrifice our inner necessity to it: it can cause only flea-bites but never heartfelt anguish. I do not care what becomes of me, as long as I become what my nature dictates I should become, only then shall I become what is right, - even if not a single person notices me as a result. - Well then: - I do not believe in my Paris opera! but my wife must know nothing of this yet. -
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 95