Dear Kietz,
Thank you very much for your letter, but not for sending me my old clothes, which cost me 6 frc . . . - But nowhere among all these clothes was there any sign of a letter!! You failed to understand my reminder to you to write: when all hell breaks loose in Paris, I at least expect a sign of life, do you understand?
Your long and heartfelt litany gave me a good deal of pleasure and amused me in many ways: what I found especially admirable was the musical composition drawn from your imagination by the sorcery of events. For the rest, permit me to refrain from prattling on about politics or anything similar. My entire political outlook no longer consists in anything but the bloodiest hatred of our entire civilization, contempt for all that it has produced, and a passionate longing for nature. But that is not something anyone will understand who felt so enchanted by the industrial exhibition. Well, you’ve got your exhibition, an exhibition in the pillory, with all your industrious workers! That I ever set store by the workers as workers is something I must now atone for grievously: with the noises they make, these workers are the wretchedest slaves, whom anyone can control nowadays if he promises them plenty of “work”. A slave mentality has taken root in everything with us: that we are human is something nobody knows in the whole of France except perhaps Proudhon at most - and even he is only dimly aware of the fact! - in the whole of Europe, however, I prefer dogs to these doglike men. However, I do not despair of the future; only the most terrible and destructive revolution can make our civilized beasts “human” again.
I am now thinking a good deal of America! Not because I might find what I am looking for there, but because the ground there is easier to plant -
Have you received from Härtel a copy of the Three Opera Poems with the preface? -
I am planning to make a start soon on my great Nibelung trilogy. But I shall perform it only on the banks of the Mississipi.
Otherwise we are as well as can be expected. When do you intend to come and visit us? I have already said I would pay your fare for you. You’d have to paint my mug in oils for my friends here. - But now you are working on Johanna, whom heaven has blessed and who is kind enough never to reply to me whenever I write to her. - Fare you well, old fellow! Minna sends her warmest wishes! If you like the preface, write and tell me!
Adieu!
Yours,
R.W.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 133