Dear Hans,
You will be surprised not to have heard from me for so long; so surprised, it seems, that you have forgotten to reply to my last letter. I had resolved to spend my free time in Paris discharging my epistolary debts, and so I shall now discharge my debt to you. -
[...]
I have almost finished scoring the first act of the Valkyrie: I have never written anything like it before: it is very beautiful! - Liszt was very generous in his remarks on the London affair inasmuch as he, too, discouraged me from any thought of financial speculation: - the Brendel clique etc. seem to think differently and even appears to have had their beloved coterie in mind. But I took another close look at Schumann’s symphonies with the honest hope of finding them beautiful and worth propagating. Well, I have now made up my mind about them and am fully convinced that it is not worth troubling myself with them: they are simply another kind of jargon which has the appearance of being profound but which, in my own opinion, is the same sort of empty nonsense as Hegel’s philosophic rubbish, which is always at its most trivial where it seems most profound. Wherever there is a glimmer of light or a real melody, it is Beethoven to the letter, who reveals himself as father and mother in one. May I be spared all further dealings with this stuff! I am more rigid than ever in my views and would prefer it if people ignored me when they talk of the heroes of music of the “present day”. How horrified Brendel’s clique would be if I suddenly took it into my head to tell them what I really think. - Will you arrange things better? I hope so!!
Liszt has been dreadfully slow in returning the “Rhinegold”: I hope it is now back in Dresden, where Wölfel is supposed to be finishing off a copy of it: I’ll then send it to you in Berlin; let me have your address. - How are you getting on with the piano score of Tannhäuser without W.? - What else are you up to? are you well? Are you reading Schopenhauer? - Remember me with affection! Fare you well.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 179