[...] Your paper on Lohengrin has made a great, an encouraging and soul-stirring impression on me. I am filled with deep and salutary emotion at the thought that I have succeeded by my artistic works in producing such an effect on you that you feel disposed to expend no small part of your extraordinary talent upon preparing the way for me, not only in practical matters but in the realm of the spirit. [...]
I have also just read your article in the Journal des Débats; the only thing I can find comparable to your persistence in serving me is the spirit in which you do it.
Yes, yes, my dear, good Liszt, I have you to thank that soon I can be entirely the artist again. I regard the actual settling down to work again on my artistic plans after so long, as one of the decisive moments of my life. Between the musical composition of my Lohengrin and that of my Siegfried, there lies for me a world of storm but also—I know it—of fruitfulness. I had to turn over in mind a whole past lifetime, to bring its darkling things to the clear light of consciousness, to get the mastery of the reflections thus necessarily aroused in me by dwelling on them—by closest investigation of their meaning—so that I might once again throw myself, with clear and happy consciousness, into the beautiful unconsciousness of artistic creation. [...] My work on the nature of opera, the latest fruit of my meditations, is expanding to greater dimensions than I at first thought probable. If I wish to prove that music (as Woman) needs the fructifying power of the poet (as Man), I must take care that this glorious Woman does not become the prey of the first libertine who comes along, but that she shall conceive only by the man who yearns for her in true and irresistible love. [...] When I have finished this book I intend—if I can find a publisher—to publish my three romantic operatic poems with an introductory "foreword" setting forth their genesis. Then, to put everything in order, I would collect the best of my Paris articles of ten years ago (among them my Beethoven novelette) into a single and perhaps not unentertaining volume, from which anyone interested in me can get to know my tendency in its origins. Happy and at ease, I should then be able by spring to undertake and finish my Siegfried without interruption. Give me your blessing on it! [...]
As to my request that you should appropriate the poem of my Wieland, it seems you have not understood me quite rightly. It is intended in all sincerity as a wish, and at the same time as a petition. Your business for the present and for the immediate future might postpone the fulfilment of my wish but could not make it impossible unless you have no inclination to carry out my sketch. In this case—I beg you—do be frank with me! If you wish to carry out my Wieland—even though not till later—I for my part will do what I can to get it well versified. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 192