appreciated Wagner's works, but Liszt was just one in a million,
and even he, as Wagner suggested, associated with a base coterie
incapable of assimilating Wagnerian messages.  Considering the
sorry state of music and intellectualism in Wagner's time and
setting, he surely would have been surprised if his operas and
his ideas achieved any wide currency.  That he continued to work
with intense energy to develop his ideas, to fix them into
musical form and to propagate them, while knowing that probably
no sizeable population would ever likely take note of them, and
while believing that his existence as an underappreciated,
rational individual in an irrational world was absurd and futile,
is a testimony to the enormous will-power of this "ubermensch." 

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

The best introduction to this important correspondence of the two
great musicians will be found in the following extract from an
autobiographical sketch written by Wagner in 1851.  It has been
frequently quoted, but cannot be quoted too often, describing, as
it does, the beginning and the development of a friendship which