O my Minna, I could cry out aloud in sorrow and distress. What a day yesterday, after I mailed the letter to you, and what a night that followed! I am so excited that I hardly can stay in the company of people. At the opera I was so carried away by every tone, by every moment, that I broke down crying. My whole being is seized by a sorrow which I could almost call despair. Thoughts, thoughts!
Minna, if you should die before I could see you again! Everything around me seems like death, I detest life without you. Am I not deserted by everybody? I don't recognize family ties any longer; for your sake I have gladly renounced everything. But now I don't even possess you any longer! What can be equal to the state I am in! To do without you for three months more is impossible. For how could I stand it? Either you must come to me or I to you. Here all jobs are filled, and even for me a definite engagement is impossible right now; only next year. Therefore I implore you once more, spare no effort to make it possible for me to join you, that we can marry soon and bring to an end this state of torment. Use any means, disdain nothing, for see, it is not for me alone, but for both of us. I have just now a good and honorable occupation, but I'll throw away everything, I hate it all—oh, I need tell you no more, you know me and know how I would pine away without you. Yesterday the whole history of our love passed through my mind, from our first meeting in Lauchstädt until now. People say love in its first stages is more glowing and ardent, but never during the two years we have been in love have I been in such a state of burning and consuming passion. No, you will never again be loved as I love you now, and I must be away from you for a quarter of a year longer!! No, no, don't believe this, Minna, a miracle will happen, it must happen. Why should God permit this blight on my life? What have I done? I can't go on, my misery is overwhelming me; more later!
May 30th. Oh, this eternal anxiety and excitement; I don't enjoy a single happy moment. I have to confess to you that I was distrustful of my first stroke of luck here. It was strange that right after my first appearance in Berlin things seemed to take a turn for the better. I found Cerf in the best humor; he immediately offered to let me substitute for Gläser during his absence, and he also held out the best hopes for my opera; my friends even started talking about my staying here permanently, etc. But all this made a very sad impression on me; I thought: "Will this good luck put your love and faith to the test? Will it perhaps force you to settle into a secure position without the possibility of marrying Minna?" I had no liking for that kind of luck and would have preferred making no use of it at all. Ah, if you would write to me in your next letter, "Richard, come," I would knock down houses with joy. You will see what a good husband I will make. And now the point is to secure Berlin for next year, when my reputation as a composer will have grown so much that I hope then to take you away from the theater. Don't you agree, Minna? Will you not also be content to leave the stage? O let the future be my care, for united with you I am confident of finding my highest powers. But now, right now, it still rests with you. Don't bother about my limited prospects here, summon me quickly to your side! Kill Schuberth, O God, do anything, anything; I can't bear it any longer, I can't go on this way. If you could only see what a dreary figure I am here!
31st of May. Is there no end to this misery? What a terrible month this has been, Minna! It was my birth month; is there any human feeling that hasn't filled my heart this month? I lie under torture in the true sense of the word, I look pale and miserable. I have not been able to get rid of the vivid impression of your letter, contrasting so sharply our love and our separation. Only the last passage gave me some hope that perhaps I may come to you soon, and see, this is my nature; from this single ray of light I am still hoping you may write to me in your next letter: "Richard, you may come." What is more, I'm hoping so strongly that I haven't yet arranged to leave the hotel and to move into a private lodging, because I keep thinking your next letter may call me to you. Alas, Minna, this last weak hope is all my comfort, to keep me going at all. Yes, I hope, I hope! You may perhaps wonder, my dear child, that I don't write anything about Berlin, its life, etc., but all this doesn't exist for me at all; I live, God knows, merely for you and in the thought of you. The only acquaintance whom I see during the day is often Schwabe, because he dines with us at the Kronprinz and is often there in the evenings too— Since your letter came I almost never go to see any one; the best I can do is to associate with those who know my grief and respect it. You know how subject I am to my single thought, how it never, never leaves me. My heart is always oppressed, I feel always that it is going to break; if somebody tries to make me laugh I begin to cry; and the night's restlessness; every morning I am roused from sleep as if with a contraction of the heart; thoughts, hundreds of images are whirring through my brain as if I had already been awake a whole day. Thus, Minna, we are consuming our youth! An end, an end to this condition, I have already suffered too much!
The 1st of June: I remember one evening, Minna my soul, in Rudolstadt I had missed you when the play was over; it was already dark; I had gone all the way back to your house without having found you. Believing you would still come, I sat on the stone bench in front of the house—I had to see you again and to speak to you, for you had just been harsh with me. The sky was black and clouded, not a star was to be seen; I stared into the dark night, my eyes filled with tears. Then already I felt so lonely and abandoned without you! I started at every footstep. Is it she? I sat for a long while like this; it grew darker and colder; my whole body became numb from the cold stone on which I sat; it had become very late. Certainly you had come home earlier; you were already in bed. I couldn't even see your room, only a cold wall stared at me. O Minna, I now feel as if I were still sitting on that bench, in the dark gloomy night, crying, unable to see you. If only my heart doesn't break, I will gladly be brave, I will do my best, will no longer be so pliant; but what if I don't succeed even so?
Minna, Fate is more than cruel, it treats us outrageously, when all we wish is to forget everything around us, and to belong to each other. Does it not seem to deride our love? And what is equal to our love! Now, now to have you beside me, to feel your presence, to be lost in your glance, to be wedded to your darling body, then all my sufferings would be dissolved in a wonderful, sweet embrace. Minna, what prevents me? I will join you, come what may. Perhaps it will be good if I am with you; everything may speed up, take another turn. O God in Heaven, do you feel as ardently as I? Tell me, may I, may I come? Are you hopeful? How unhappy I am!! These lines must be quickly sent, they are burning in my hands. Tell me, may I come? Quickly, answer quickly—
Your
Richard
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 15