[...] Have you all forgotten me? I have been so lonely of late that I often grow afraid. Can it be that you are angry with me about something or other? Perhaps about that foolish misunderstanding with Biedenfeld? He wrote to me that he had got to know that I had been annoyed about his great article on Lohengrin. I was quite perplexed and could only think a misapprehension of some expression or other in one of my letters to you must have caused you, and consequently Biedenfeld, to mistake me entirely. [...]
My big book is finished. It is entitled Opera and Drama. I haven't got a publisher yet, and as I must of course consider getting some money for it this time, I am a little uneasy about the affair. I mean to spend next month in editing my three romantic "Operatic Poems"; a rather lengthy introduction will enlarge upon the origins of these poems and their relation to music.
With the coming of spring I hope to begin on the composition of my Siegfried and to work on it uninterruptedly.
For the rest, my joy in life is not great. It is all very still and lonesome about me—and often I seem to myself like one dead and forgotten. [...]
Not a word more about Wieland!—I am heartily sorry that—you are right. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 196