To Professor Dehn, Berlin52
Berlin, October 28th, 1841.
Sir,
The kind and amiable feelings which your letter of yesterday testified towards me, caused me great pleasure, and I beg to thank you very sincerely and truly. Although I entirely agree with you that my choruses to ‘Antigone’ will furnish an opportunity for a number of unfair and malignant attacks, still I cannot meet these unpleasant probabilities by the means which you are so good as to propose to me. I have always made it an inviolable rule, never to write on any subject connected with music, even in newspapers, nor either directly or indirectly to prompt any article to be written on my own compositions; and although I am well aware how often this must be both a temporary and sensible disadvantage, still I cannot deviate from a resolution which I have strictly followed out under all circumstances. I decline, therefore, accepting your obliging offer; but I beg you will believe that my gratitude for the friendly intentions you expressed remains the same; and in the hope of soon finding an opportunity to repeat this assurance in person, I am, etc.53