At that time I was working with great enthusiasm upon the draft of a connected essay, and was delighted one day to receive a visit from the novelist and Tieckian scholar, Eduard von Billow (the father of my young friend Billow), who was passing through Zurich.  In my tiny little room I read him my chapter on poetry, and could not help noticing that he was greatly startled at my ideas on literary drama and on the advent of the new Shakespeare.  I thought this all the more reason why Wigand the publisher should accept my new revolutionary book, and expected him to pay me a fee which would be in proportion to the greater size of the work.  I asked for twenty louis d’or, and this sum he agreed to pay me.

The prospect of receiving this amount induced me to carry out the plan, which need had forced upon me, of travelling to Paris and of trying my luck there as a composer of opera.  This plan had very serious drawbacks; not only did I hate the idea, but I knew that I was doing an injustice to myself by believing in the success of my enterprise, for I felt that I could never seriously throw myself into it heart and soul.  Everything, however, combined to make me try the experiment, and it was Liszt in particular who, confident of this being my only way to fame, insisted upon my reopening the negotiations into which Belloni and I had entered during the previous summer.  To show with what earnestness I tried to consider the chances of carrying out my plan, I drafted out the plot of the opera, which the French poet would only have to put into verse, because I never for a moment fancied that it would be possible for him to think out and write a libretto for which I would only need to compose the music.  I chose for my subject the legend of Wieland der Schmied, upon which I commented with some stress at the end of my recently finished Kunstwerk der Zukunft, and the version of which by Simrock, taken from the Wilkyna legend, had greatly attracted me.

I sketched out the complete scenario with precise indication of the dialogue for three acts, and with a heavy heart decided to hand it over to my Parisian author to be worked out.  Liszt thought he saw a means of making my music known through his relations with Seghers, the musical director of a society then known as the ‘Concerts de St. Cecile.’  In January of the following year the Tannhauser Overture was to be given under his baton, and it therefore seemed advisable that I should reach Paris some time before this event.  This undertaking, which appeared to be so difficult owing to my complete lack of funds, was at last facilitated in a manner quite unexpected.