[...] The young man [de Charnal] who made a translation of Tannhäuser gave it to me to look through. After the first fleeting glance I let it fall and said to myself, "This is impossible!" I felt I was rid of a troublesome idea—that of a French Tannhäuser—and I breathed more freely. But it was only my own personality which did so; that other, my daemon—my genius?—said to me: "You see how incapable this Frenchman, or any other, is of translating your poems, and so you mean to prevent any performance of your work in France at all. But how will it be when you are dead and when for the first time your works begin really to live?—when there is no need to ask your permission, and Tannhäuser is performed in just such a translation as now lies before you and treated just as uncomprehendingly as the noblest German poems (Faust, for example)?" Ah, child, this expectation of a possible immortality is a daemon of quite a special kind, and brings one the same cares which bind mother and father to the welfare of their child long beyond the limits of their own lives. I alone can get an adequate translation of my works, and this duty I cannot avoid. Now I spend morning after morning sitting with my young poet and go through it verse for verse, word for word, nay, syllable for syllable with him. I often seek for hours on end for the best turn of speech, the best word. I sing to him, I give him insight into a world utterly closed to him before. I am delighted now with his zeal, his growing enthusiasm and his frank confession of his former blindness—and—we shall see! At least I know that, as well as I can, I am caring for my child's eternal future! [...]
24th September.
[...] From the practical standpoint, things are turning out very tolerably indeed. My price here has just begun to rise, and lately it has seemed likely that the rise would be fairly rapid—at any rate, since my conversation yesterday with the director [Carvalho] of the Théâtre Lyrique (a really pleasant and reasonable man), it lies in my hand alone how soon I make a Parisian fortune. Well, I pray that things will turn out so that I can keep my affairs straight this winter and go back to my dear Switzerland in the spring—for only there can Siegfried wake Brynhilde! That could not very well be managed in Paris.—I am expecting almost at once a very detailed reply from Karlsruhe on many points. I am holding out for a very high standard there. I may be giving them trouble, but it can't be helped! The fruit of Tristan is not to be easily plucked! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 430