Supremely beloved King and friend,
Only now have I finally found time to meet all my obligations towards my exalted benefactor, obligations that have been piling up in recent months to the point where they threaten to overwhelm me. They are but obligations of gratitude, each one of which is linked to the next, so that there is but one means that offers itself by which to express that gratitude, a means which, on the final evening of those memorable weeks we have all just lived through, inspired me with the words to describe the ideal that I wished to characterize. Permit me therefore to begin at the end in reporting these events.
Once again I invited all my faithful singers and musicians to assemble in my garden for a farewell party; everywhere was illuminated, as it had been for my last birthday; the children had arranged another torchlight procession: I then bade the trumpeter call my guests together, stood on the steps that lead down into the garden from the salon, and addressed my army of guests in terms appropriate to the festive occasion. I explained to them the significance of their action in having assembled here from every corner of Germany, an incomparably select band that had come in response to my appeal to perform so strange a work of art; they could tell themselves with the greatest satisfaction that, in the space of this brief period when, with genuine virtuosity, they had played through the whole of my four dramas in eleven days, they had achieved what had hitherto been unbelievable; but they had also accomplished something far more significant, something of which they themselves were probably scarcely aware: they had set an example which the egotistical world of present-day art now might follow, an example of which we should all be capable if so we chose, and if the right person were to show us the way, namely to offer us proof of the fact that the only truly living art is now music. But - I went on - if I wanted to persuade them to raise a shout of exultation in this same spirit, it would be hard for me to name some abstract entity such as art or music as an object worthy of celebration. When the ancient Greeks wished to celebrate art, they could call on their beautiful god Apollo; we no longer had any gods; and yet I did not know how I could have spoken to them today without a god, or how, on such a cheerful and festive occasion, I could have placed so sublime an interpretation upon the deed they had accomplished, and saluted them for it. And so, I concluded, they would all understand what I wanted to say to them when I called out: long live the exalted protector of my life: long live the King of Bavaria! - Inextinguishably the selfsame cry thundered forth from every breast and soul! -
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 432