My worthy friend,
Forgive me for having been so slow in attesting how much your letter has gladdened me: Uhlig will, I hope, have already obtained your forgiveness, he knows how ill I am. Please accept the enclosed gift of my Lohengrin score simply as an expression of the pleasure I feel at having found someone who, in spite of such unpropitious circumstances, has taken the trouble to get to know me better. How unsatisfactory it is to conduct such an acquaintanceship merely by means of the written word (for even a printed drama or an engraved opera score is, after all, simply an example of the written word) is something which no one feels more keenly and more clearly than I; it must remain unsatisfactory, but at least this knowledge may help to justify and explain whatever misunderstandings arise between us. The fact that, in writing about my Lohengrin, you could know me only imperfectly was of course obvious to me; all the more touching, then, was it to discover the indefatigable effort with which you had sought to come to terms with my ideas, so that, for my own part, I myself felt a spontaneous wish to draw closer to you, at least as far as my present circumstances allow. You may therefore regard my sending a copy of this score to you as an attempt to do my best by way of satisfying this wish. But you are wrong to speak of any possible desire on my part to shame you: rather should you call it sincere gratitude!
Unfortunately, this score will be of little help to you in getting to know me better: if only I could present you with one of my dramatic works in the way I should like, I can assure you that it would be something quite different! What I find so painful is that here, too, I am forced to live at one remove from myself: Lohengrin ought to have been performed long ago and immediately forgotten. If I now feel any desire to present this opera on stage in a decent performance, my only reason for doing so is to make good a past omission, and this involvement with the work is something I can really only relate to the actual performance - as a work of art in itself; for what I ought now to be achieving as a human being, as a poet and as a musician, in accord with my innermost nature, bears little relationship to Lohengrin, except as a sort of historical consequence, so that, if I do now perform it, people will see in it only a certain part of me, but certainly not the whole of me as I now am. This sense of remoteness, or rather this dislocation of the artist from his work of art is a real curse, which I do not think anyone has felt as keenly as I have, since for me true, pure artistic creativity is little other than a surrogate for something which I know to be my most basic need but a need which I am never allowed to satisfy. But that is enough on this dreary subject: yet those who are incapable of discovering this point for themselves and of sympathizing with it from the outset can only ever see me in a false and totally alien light. But whoever deludes himself into thinking that I am seeking satisfaction by inventing a new art-form for opera knows not the first thing about me.
Finally a word of reassurance! I discover to my regret that you are having a bad time of things; I, too, am living a life of despair and continuous, enforced resignation: but there is nothing that could make my life less of a burden to me than to be able to exert some beneficial influence on the lives of my friends. If I can be of help to you in the present case, you may be certain that it will make me very happy to do so.
I hope to hear from you again soon and in the meantime offer you my most sincere good wishes.
Your most obedient servant
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 151