But, child, what has put it into your head to want to think me—or wish me—a "sage"? Surely I am the most nonsensical person one can well imagine! Judged by the measure of the sage, I must seem frankly criminal, and for the very reason that I know so much and so many things, and know, in particular, that wisdom is so desirable and so excellent a thing. And yet it is that which gives me the humour which carries me over abysses of which the wisest sage is not so much as aware. That makes me a poet and—what is much worse—a musician. Just consider my music, with its delicate, delicate, secretly flowing sap, penetrating through the subtlest pores of perception to the very marrow of life, there overpowering conscious pride, the carefully constructed fortifications of the self, sweeping away all that belongs to the mirage of personality, leaving nothing but the marvellous exaltation of avowed impotency. How can I be a wise man, when it is only in such raving madness that I am at home?
But let me tell you something. To the temple at Delphi came princes and people from all the ends of the world to hear prophecies about themselves. The priests were sages, who imparted the prophecies to them; they, however, first received them from the Pythoness, who, in the wildest throes of ecstasy at the tripod of inspiration, gave utterance to the words of the gods in strange groans, which the priests had only to translate into speech intelligible to the world. I believe that one who has sat at the tripod can never again be a priest; he stands in the immediate presence of the god!
Remember, besides, that Dante did not meet his taciturn and smooth-spoken sages in Paradise, but in some doubtful middle region between Heaven and Hell. But on the cross the Saviour could say to the poor thief, "To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
You see, you cannot get even with me—my cunning is a match for anything, and I have a terrible amount of mythology in my head. Grant me that, and I will grant you that you are right—and, still more, that it costs me nothing to admit it to you, for whenever I chance to think upon the subject which you bring home to me so anxiously, I become so angry and so discontented with myself, that the only thing that can embitter my self-reproaches yet more, is the knowledge that others doubt that I ever make them! And yet after all, you dear child, it is my best comfort to learn that all these hidden processes of my heart are so tenderly and deeply shared by another. Be satisfied with me! Are you? [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 423