[...] It is all over with the calm sense of security in which I made my plans for a livelihood. This removal, new fittings and furnishings, have made hay of my calculations, and the day that I rented this little house and paid the rent for the last two quarters in advance—as demanded for security—was the beginning of endless worry for me. You could scarcely fail to wonder and would undoubtedly be surprised at my moderation, if I were to tell you in detail into what interminable malheur I have fallen. Well, we will leave that for another time!—At present it is with veritable grief I see the total wreckage of my schemes for providing for myself wholly from our Nibelungs transaction until a new and lasting capital could be accumulated from my savings from other sources; this has become impossible upon the proceeds of The Rhinegold and The Valkyrie. Listen to this patiently, and don't be angry with me when I tell you that, in my increasing anxiety for my immediate future, I looked about for the sources of supply which ought to flow for me from my other works. Even while I was casting up Tristan in this account, Tristan was suddenly and totally erased for an indefinite period—its first performance quite impossible for the present. [...] I know how pained I should have been by such a stunted performance, and yet I must almost regret seeing myself delivered from that pain. [...] In Berlin my "Lohengrin" has lost his voice and I see the prospect of a long interruption in the run of the opera there. So I must look all the more greedily to the Paris Tannhäuser. Well, that will probably come off, and if I am in the right mood for it, this prospect of supply for the future is assured me (a valuable item to me as regards my affairs). Only I must not count on it at once. The manager is ready and anxious to be able to give the opera, but how long they will let his theatre stand (it is to be pulled down to make a new thoroughfare) he does not know himself; it is possible they may begin to demolish it by March. They are to build him a big new theatre instead; I note that Carvalho wants to put off Tannhäuser till then. That does not look so bad for one who can wait, but in my present situation it is—ignominious. Well, I am getting on with the translation, anyhow. Roger will do it well; without, indeed, being quite on a cultural and intellectual level to do justice to his task from the poetic aspect, he is yet quite well fitted for the translation in all other ways. [...] I was with him again yesterday. I could see that I have to do with a man, amiable and talented by nature, who, however, cannot bear prolonged mental exertion and is glad to return to the trivialities of routine. He had only done a very little work and implored me to come more often to spur him on; all the same, he eagerly seized a pretext to leave the piano and slip away to the domino-table where he remained happily glued until I—seeing the company was hopeless—took hasty leave to retrace my steps to Paris. I am to go again on Monday. A terrible disgust, wounded pride, often boils up in me here, and I think of myself as wretched, dishonoured, unworthy to live. God knows if I am understood! What I might do and achieve! And yet, I see well enough that I must try to find myself in Roger; and really he is quite a likeable fellow. He has been blessed, too, in that pretty talent of his. His property and goods are valued at a million and he has a castle, too, in a huge park with fine tall trees, where he can play dominoes. And then I come back home and reflect whether I shall be blamed if I order chenets for all the fire-places in my house.—Well—the world is made like that—and if I am in the right mood Tristan shall be made, too. But—I shall need the mood! You see that!
Seriously, I regard this Paris project as, at bottom, simply another piece of trickery to dangle something before my eyes and cheat me into patience. I know all about it! And now here's another bait for Tristan! The Dresden Intendant [von Lüttichau] sends word that he is hoping to work upon the King of Saxony to summon me to Dresden for a first performance of Tristan. But this could not take place before July next year. At least I should have singers with good voices there. Now, what is one to say to that?
[...] Of late I have acquired a lively conviction that I can forgo the performance of Tristan and everything else, if I can only be sure of being able to go on working undisturbed. I am bracing myself now and taking a deep breath for the last act of Siegfried—when I have sighed that out, I shall not mind what happens. For I see this—I am only quite myself now when I am creating. The actual production of my works is for a more refined age, an age which I must first prepare through my sufferings! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 441