[...] Now to the business of who is to be godfather. It is disgraceful that you have to have your child baptized: but if you wish to make this act less demeaning in its symbolical influence, and if you think my acting as godfather will help, take me and I shall gladly assist; I also regard Karl as the only rightful person to represent me. Concerning the boy’s education, I should be glad to hear the programme you have planned for him: do you intend to inoculate him with the poison of religion and modern education and in that way leave it to the vagaries of fate as to whether he spits out the poison again or whether it in fact destroys him? I do not regard this question as a joke. We hold the future in our hands: shall we be so cowardly and base as to hand over our children to the same butchery which (let us be frank!) has made us incapable, incomplete and wicked? In the interests of truth, we have reached a period of our lives when we have now grown unsuited to deriving pleasure from it: is this - at best - to be the fate of our children, too? - [...]
To you and Karl I commend a new friend of mine, the English poet Shelley. There is only one German translation of his works in existence, by Seybt, which you must get hold of. He and his friend Byron together form a single complete and glorious human being.
You will soon learn that I am in the midst of my Nibelung poem: it is my only salvation.
Fare you well! Greetings to all at home and at the Ritters’.
Yours,
R.W.
53(!) December (I shall continue to refer to the month of the coup d’état until the hoped-for year of 1852 finally comes.)
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 135