Dear Kietz,
Very many thanks for your recent letter: it was as welcome for its contents as for the friendly zeal with which you conveyed the same to me. In accordance with your wishes, I am enclosing a brief note to Seghers: will you be so good as to pass it on to him?
The reason I am so late in replying is that I have only just got round to writing all the letters I owe: I have been so engrossed in my work until now that I could not allow myself any distractions. - I have just written the poem for a “Young Siegfried” which I am planning to compose for Weimar - where it has been commissioned: it is intended to precede “Siegfried’s death”, and is of a non-serious character. - I am now giving people lots to talk and write about in Germany: Härtels are publishing the vocal score of Lohengrin and even plan to have the full score engraved. Can you not get hold of the Leipzig “Illustrirte Zeitung”? The issue of 12 April contains a splendid article on Lohengrin by Liszt.
My book: Opera and Drama, will be appearing in about 2 months’ time. As for the rest, life here is tolerable: tomorrow I intend setting out for Lake Constance to meet one of the old faithfuls from Dresden who has skimped and saved in order to be able to visit me here: we plan to return by way of the Appenzell alps.
So you ran out of ink again? - God, on the whole I wouldn’t care whether I had any ink or not! What we now do with ink is mere masturbation! - If I were completely free - I should not mind the least privation: in my present wretched condition that might even hold some appeal for me. -
I long passionately for the revolution, and the only thing that gives me the will to live is the hope of surviving long enough to see it and to take part in it. - That Paris must be the starting-point is natural enough! - In the mean time we do what we do in order to blind ourselves to the non-lives that we lead. Art alone, as always, helps us in our self-deception. -
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 123