[590W-{9/12/52}Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 270]
[P. 270] {FEUER} “ Once you are again permitted to concern yourself with literature, I should like you to send me word whether I might from time to time be allowed to send you books. I am sure you would find Feuerbach’s writings uncommonly stimulating reading.” [590W-{9/12/52}Letter to August Roeckel: SLRW, p. 270]
[591W-{10/14/52}Letter to Theodor Uhlig: RW: LDF, p. 285]
[P. 285] “I would rather burn away in fire – best of all in that of Hafis. Do study Hafis carefully: he is the greatest and most sublime philosopher. Certainly no other writer has given the great question so sure and irrefutable an answer. There is only one thing – that which he commends: and all beside is not a farthing’s worth, however high and noble it may call itself. Something similar to this will also be shown in my own Nibelungen.” [591W-{10/14/52}Letter to Theodor Uhlig: RW: LDF, p. 285]
[592W-{10/28/52}Letter to Robert Franz: SLRW, p. 271]
[P. 271] “ … what I ought now to be achieving as a human being, as a poet and as a musician, in accord with my innermost nature, bears little relationship to Lohengrin, except as a sort of historical consequence, so that, if I do now perform it, people will see in it only a certain part of me, but certainly not the whole of me as I now am. This sense of remoteness, or rather this dislocation of the artist from his work of art is a real curse, which I do not think anyone has felt as keenly as I have, since for me true, pure artistic creativity is little other than a surrogate for something which I know to be my most basic need but a need which I am never allowed to satisfy. But that is enough on this dreary subject: yet those who are incapable of discovering this point for themselves and of sympathising with it from the outset can only ever see me in a false and totally alien light. But whoever deludes himself into thinking that I am seeking satisfaction by inventing a new art-form for opera knows not the first thing about me.” [592W-{10/28/52}Letter to Robert Franz: SLRW, p. 271]
[593W-{11/11/52}Letter to Luise Brockhaus: SLRW, p. 274]
[P. 274] “ … my life is forfeit and, having never enjoyed it, I can now eke it out only by artificial means, in other words – by means of my art. But the despair I feel at confronting the artistic life of Europe with my art is something which can be felt only by those who know to what extent art for me is a substitute for a life of unsatisfied desire: and how superficial, on the other hand, is the judgement of those people who advise me to set about acquiring fame! I pour out into my art the violent need I feel for love, a need which life cannot satisfy, and all I find in return is that people at best mistake me for an energetic – opera reformer!” [593W-{11/11/52}Letter to Luise Brockhaus: SLRW, p. 274]
