[...] In these latter days there has been one period only when I really lived. That was the time when I shut myself up in Paris under incredibly perverse conditions, and, as if my life depended on it, wrote the whole poem of my Mastersingers in a month. I had finished it by the end of January, and the next thing was to find a refuge where I could write the music for it. I have achieved this at last here in Biebrich after countless difficulties, and so my whole time till to-day has been spent in continual conflict with unpleasantnesses and in the vilest of humours. To-morrow, however, I hope to begin composition. My intention is to have the whole finished by the late autumn so that it may run through all the German theatres next winter. Once there, I shall not trouble my head about it. This resolution alone has saved me. For an enterprise like this, I found I could get an advance from my publisher [Schott] to keep me for a year of work. The month's work in Paris was my happiest, but I could only preserve the spell by looking neither to left nor right; in the end I ceased to see people—only garçons and concierges. The poem gave me immense delight. I believe it is my most brilliant piece. I shall have it printed towards the end of summer. [...]
[...] As to my life otherwise, I avoid people as much as possible—my choice of a retreat will tell you that. Above all I am taking care henceforth not to have anything to do with the theatre and opera-house; I can only get light to create for these people if I do not see them.—
I have been much interested in what you wrote me of Bakunin—I could almost see the man before me! He is and remains a tremendous fellow. Really one needs to make a study of the bear to account for a nature like that. Röckel has been released, too, at last; he has behaved splendidly and shown unshakable resolution. He boasts a bear's nature, too, and is delighted to be able to engage in politics and agitation again. Truly I have nothing against this, and am glad to see such people at their work, but it becomes too much of a profession with them and they acquire routine ideas and opinions which I must sometimes admire, even if I cannot find much substance in them. However, that does not seem to matter. The political formula has so many high-sounding names that it always looks important. I cannot help it, but I no longer see men in masses, but only as individuals, each of whom has his own way of thinking—and I mine! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 522