Most honoured Prince,
Your serene Highness could perhaps obtain the best explanation of why I considered it indispensable at least to attempt to persuade you to take cognizance of my essay if you were to read its final pages. No one will be more understanding than I if Your Highness were unable to show me even this fleeting favour; but many would think it remiss of me if I were to allow myself to be deterred by my apprehension from leaving untried whatever means might be appropriate to acquaint the great reviver of German hopes with the cultural idea which inspires me and which, by virtue of the most strenuous exertions of my entire life, I now feel impelled to express in terms which the nation will understand. Since any further attempt to persuade Your Highness to take note of this essay is bound to seem as inappropriate as it must be futile, I wish only that these lines may serve to excuse any possible nuisance that this letter may have caused. It may none the less appear to me permissible in your eyes to express my deep anxiety that an undertaking such as that which I am planning should be carried into effect without the participation of the only truly supportive and ennobling authority, a participation that I myself must necessarily consider of the profoundest import; in which case I should have to console myself with the fate that befell the rebirth of the German spirit through the great poets of the second half of the last century, a rebirth to which its true hero, Frederick the Great, remained aloof and indifferent.
With the expression of my boundless respect, I remain
Your Highness’s deeply devoted admirer
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 418