[...] As for my direct relations with Germany, I find my progress persistently impeded by one difficulty after another, the most discouraging of which is the discovery of how incredibly little people in Germany can be bothered about me and my new works. It seems very much as though they are basically quite satisfied to think that my Tristan is really a failed and unperformable work, as my Karlsruhe friends have very wisely given it out to be: this saves them a great deal of trouble and spares them every kind of effort; it also allows them to forget the matter, an attitude which I myself might even end up by accepting since my earlier works are now fairly widely accepted. More or less the whole of my German fatherland replies to me in this vein, a few foolish young admirers excepted. But anyone who now approaches me in person will no doubt end up feeling a sense of shame, and will come to see for himself the humiliation that is inflicted upon me: that is why so many people are wary of approaching me in person; ignorance is so much to be preferred at a kind of abstract distance. As chance would have it, I recently came into contact with the Saxon ambassador here, an extremely good-natured man whose initial reaction to me was very much the one described. He is now in Dresden, and I almost believe that when he confers in person with the King, he will find a way of settling this business of mine. At least he hoped as much! - If I am to be allowed to set foot on German soil once again, I expect that only then will the full extent of my misery finally become clear to me and many of my last-remaining illusions will disappear: I can more or less see it in advance: and yet my curious destiny drives me to seek understanding at the breast of one of the stupidest of all nations, simply because I happen to speak that nation’s language.
In the mean time, however, this same destiny will guide me in other directions. Just when Germany makes things difficult for me, the glorious prospect of France suddenly opens up to me - as though out of the blue. Although I did not have an inkling of what was going on, it appears that at a court ball the Emperor Napoleon III made the young Princess Metternich the chivalrous gift of ordering a performance of my Tannhäuser to be given at the Grand Opera. At the same time, everything I require for this purpose is to be placed at my disposal: I shall be able to command the services of the entire institute, just as I think fit. So far I have felt insuperably indifferent to the whole affair, and the director is having some difficulty in spurring me on. However, the thing I had least believed in - a good translation - has now in fact come off, at least as far as such a thing is possible; admittedly, it cost me a good deal of effort and trouble, and involved many a smiling concession on my part. But it is now done. I still have a great deal to do, especially the first scene in the Venusberg (which was always rather weak): it needs significant changes for which I have already worked out a satisfactory plan. I expect that by degrees I shall rediscover my desire for work and, with it, regain my enthusiasm for the whole affair, since I am gradually coming to understand the wisdom of my fate’s decrees behind its apparently arbitrary whims. - I feel clearly that Tristan and the Nibelungs are the only works that now concern me, and every plan that distracts me from them leaves me cold. But given the quite singular nature of these works, their uncommon difficulties, and the unbelievably impoverished state of our opera houses, I could regard it only as a misfortune if, ignoring all this, I chose to surrender these works to these same theatres just as they were, and to arrange a first performance, here or there, as the occasion arose. For this, as for my principal task in life, I must be given total and unconditional freedom to do as I please; I must be able to regard these performances as something quite out of the ordinary and exceptional, and bring them off as such, otherwise - Karlsruhe will be proved right. And so I must be able to move around as freely as possible, to renounce all monetary advantage, and even be in a position to make sacrifices: and — the Paris Tannhäuser now offers me the chance to do all this. This, it is true, is a round-about means, but - it appears - it is the only certain route to my goal! And so I shall no doubt have to comply and be patient. Do you not think so, too? - Ah, how fortunate the Germans are that Napoleon takes such good care of them: they themselves are certainly incapable of doing so! -
For the rest, I can assure you that I have no reason to be dissatisfied with Parisian audiences. When I think, for ex., of the bewilderment which my dear Dresdeners felt at Tannhäuser, and contrast it with the swift and instantaneous impression that my music has sparked off in the French, who immediately greeted certain of my melodies and phrases with the greatest enthusiasm, I am bound to ask myself whether the conceited notion of the Germans’ alleged intelligence is not straight out of one of the Grimms’ fairy-tales? Even the press wasted no time in declaring itself much more emphatically in my favour than was ever the case in Germany: the fact that many of the local hacks are paid, and therefore predisposed to slander, means nothing: everyone knows as much here, and, however voluble their abuse, it has no effect; but the fact that all the unbiased critics quickly and decisively declared their recognition and admiration is something I never encountered in Germany. If, in addition, I consider the uncommon importance that many intelligent French men and women who have made my acquaintance now attach to what they regard as the wholly predictable success of my Tannhäuser, I may well have good grounds for observing the forthcoming undertaking with a great deal of interest. And yet I am childish enough not to want to tear myself away, even for a moment, from Tristan and my Nibelungs! How foolish one can be at times! -
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 258