[...] We are, as far as possible, domestically settled here and after a long interval full of torment and unrest I am once more able to set to work upon my great artistic schemes for the future. Nothing, after my reunion with my much-tried wife, could give me greater joy than to hear of your creative artistic activities. Your musical pieces composed for the centenary celebrations of Goethe's birth have come to my knowledge in a pianoforte arrangement, and I have carefully studied them. [...] My liveliest feeling after I had got to know these pieces was, however, the wish soon to see you write an opera, or finish the one already begun. The aphoristic nature of the task imposed on you by these Goethe celebrations has necessarily impressed itself involuntarily upon the work of art and prevented it from achieving perfect spontaneity of feeling. I think of the power of musical creation as of a bell which, however great it is, does not give forth its full tone till the necessary force has set it in full swing. This power is an inward one, and where it does not exist inwardly it does not exist at all. [...] You have opened Paris to me and truly I will not turn my back on it, but as to my choosing and planning something for the place, I really cannot do it at a moment's notice. I must be someone else there, and yet I must necessarily remain the same. My numerous schemes were all adapted for performance under my own sole direction and in the German language. Certain things (such as Jesus of Nazareth) which I would in case of need be ready to use for Paris, turn out in many respects impossible on closer inspection from the practical point of view, so that I really must have time and leisure here to call up ideas such as I can in any case only expect to find in somewhat foreign regions of my nature. Besides, the text of my Siegfried now lies before me. I have not composed a note for two years, and now my whole being as an artist urges me to compose music for it. [...]
[...] How and whence am I to get the means of livelihood? Is my finished work Lohengrin worth nothing? Is the opera which I am so insistently impelled to finish now, worth nothing? I suppose they must seem luxuries to the present times and their public! [...] I have heard nothing at all of Heinrich Brockhaus (of whom you write), and at heart am glad of it. Dear Liszt, let us leave the shopkeepers alone—once for all! They are human beings and lovers of art, of course—but only in so far as "business" permits! Now what do you think—help me, advise me! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 161