"Even the most serious writers on Wagner - mainly in Germany but increasingly in the Anglo-Saxon world - seem incapable of treating the object of their attention with the same degree of calmness and composure that other writers bring to bear on comparable subjects. Few who write on Mozart or Beethoven, Goethe or Thomas Mann, feel obliged to to begin by apologising or announcing a polemical intent. With Wagner, by contrast, this is almost always the case. Writers who grapple the subject feel that they have to take a particular line, defending or attacking Wagner, apologising for adopting a positive stance, or engaging in breast beating polemics in an attempt to demonstrate to the world their moral and intellectual integrity". Dieter Borchmeyer: Drama and the World of Richard Wagner, Trans: Daphane Ellis, pp viii (2003)