Dear Richard,
Even though your lines of the 16th of last month really did not deserve an answer, I feel induced, through your letter of the 4th of this month, which I received yesterday on my return from Paris, to wish you with all my heart on your coming birthday lasting health for your great and dangerous journey as well as the best of good fortune in all your future undertakings. After I had read your letter in which you definitely come out for a permanent separation, I was most deeply shocked and affected, and I could find some degree of composure, for the moment, only in the decision to see you personally in Paris, to hear those terrible words from your own lips. Experience has taught me that one says, even writes, something in a bad humor (and what haven't you said to me in the course of your life which would have been impossible for me to carry out); no one, therefore, could dissuade me from my plan. On Sunday the 21st I went to the mail-coach station accompanied by our most faithful friends Baumgartner and Sulzer, who were deeply grieved about your decision. I arrived in Paris on Wednesday afternoon; the first thing I did was, of course, to go to Franck to find out your address, but I learned unfortunately that you had already been away several days, where they did not know; evidently you shrewdly kept your new whereabouts from your friends. I missed Kietz several times; finally I rode to Montmorency with him; there I heard once more that you had already left Thursday. If you have any trace of human feeling, through lengthy days I've wandered around in this fateful Paris . . . you can imagine how I must have felt. I had made the long trip under the most terrible emotional stress and could not reach you. Richard, now I am more firmly than ever convinced that there is a Providence; otherwise I would have this time lost my mind through this hard blow which you gave me. I implore you, what is happening to you again this year? Nothing is holy to you; nothing more remained for you to destroy but our marital happiness; that's why you drag in the pettiest, most unjust, most contemptible accusations to guard yourself against reproaches; you talk yourself into things which never existed between us; finally you lie to yourself to gloss over the abominable way you are treating me again. I don't want to reproach you with this, but I must be granted the opportunity of defending myself from those insulting accusations against which every fiber in me revolts. Naturally I am not a good fighter, and in your present mood I face a very dangerous opponent, but I dare it anyhow, exerting my last remnant of strength and courage, and Heaven grant that you may recognize that I draw the courage (the truth) from the very depth of my oppressed soul. First you speak of the complete difference between our temperaments; I confess that I never even heard you say a single word about the fact that we did not suit each other until now, after we've already been married for fourteen years. You speak of the earliest scenes between us, frequent and ugly; you credit me with a good memory for things like that, and for that very reason I remember those which you repeatedly brought on when driven by a terrible jealousy; after these were overcome, both of us got along so well and lived together more happily than is often the case with married people. Only during the last two years, ever since you turned to miserable politics, which have destroyed many a happy relationship, have I been unwise enough not to avoid violent scenes with you; I just simply could not understand you in this matter, but one thing was clear in my simple mind—that nothing good would come to you from revolutionary activity. For that reason I was also against the association with Bakunin and Röckel, because I saw what a destructive influence they exercised on you, even on your health; for that I can be excused; only for your sake did I expose myself to the most violent scenes. But at least we have had no more in Zürich itself. Now you unjustly spread these over our entire past. I only wanted to preserve you for your art, which I admire and idolize; I wanted you to let the genius within you have free rein, not to oppose yourself by force; eventually the time would surely have come again when you could see your wishes fulfilled, but you should not have lost your patience right away. I saw with unspeakable anguish how you tore yourself away from the path of art, from Germany for which I so much wanted to preserve you, and I always had the painful feeling that you were also tearing yourself away from me. Never was I ashamed to say that I was following you to Zürich; I promised myself to say to every one, so as not to give your enemies any cause for new slanders, that I was going to join you in Paris. Just as little did it occur to me to boast that I suffered with you; I only mentioned that Paris misery in order to emphasize your accomplishment rather than my duty, to assist you to the best of my ability; and only he who never knew or did his duty could consider it a crime, as you do in your letter to me; still, duty only develops from love, especially with a woman, and I have always borne the worst with love, courage, even with a smile. How else would it have been possible? I never had any personal interest; I look back with righteousness on my behavior toward you. Finally you humiliate me to such a degree that you don't even shrink from writing that I made the mistake of coming to Wagner in Zürich, expecting to find there the Wagner who was commissioned to write an opera for Paris; I ask you now: What were you, after all, when I married you? I'm sorry to have to tell you: you were a poor neglected, unknown, unemployed musical conductor; and what prospects did I have to look forward to at that time?—O Richard, you are in a bad state of mind; you are hurting me terribly again!! The reason I did not keep you here was because I was actually not permitted to on the advice of the doctor; you grew more irritable, more violent every day, so that it became clear to me that a change of air, of occupation, would divert you from your moods. The date of the performance of your overture was approaching; Liszt sent the money; you yourself became restless; and now it is my fault that I drove you away for lack of love. Just remember how you found me in tears with Sulzer two weeks before your departure, and for so many days before that I swallowed nothing but tears during meals whenever I thought of your going away. I was miserable with longing for you every time; after the departure I was always embittered and angry with the restless Richard Wagner, for it was always he who would tear my husband from my side. Oh, my God, what else shall I tell you? Whenever I could find a little surprise which made you happy, how happy I was too! Everything that kept me busy and active in our home was intended only to please you, and from the earliest times I did everything out of love; even my independence, which I valued so highly, I gave up gladly to be able to belong to you completely. As for your spiritual development, I was happy in the knowledge that you were close to me while you created all the beautiful things, and that shows that I understood you completely; you always made me so happy, sang and played almost every new scene for me. But since two years ago, when you wanted to read me that essay in which you slander whole races which have been fundamentally helpful to you, I could not force myself to listen; and ever since that time you have borne a grudge against me, and punished me so severely for it that you never again let me hear anything from your works.
In spite of all our petty frictions and political squabbles, you have not felt so unhappy nor so lonely in my company as you harshly claimed in your letter. Just remember all your earlier letters, especially the one you wrote to me four weeks ago from Bordeaux in which you still said that you knew of no greater happiness than to live with me peacefully and undisturbed in the magnificent Alpine world. You withdrew from all company so that you could be at home; and no man does this if the grief, the sorrow which his wife causes him has eaten into him as you like to say. Just remember how once, when you could not avoid going out, you called to me as soon as you got back: Oh, my good Mienel, how glad I am to be back with you. Your verbal statements to your Zürich friends prove you a liar a hundred times. Why do you tell me, why do you write me all this when you've felt so boundlessly unhappy with me ever since our marriage? This seems unnatural to me. One single letter arouses you about our past, a letter which I wrote in the most humble and submissive mood. Your letter from Paris in which you told me that you did not want to write another opera reached me when I was sick: the apartment hunting, the approaching move had excited me so much that I could not sleep for many weeks and had to take medicine for four weeks. I considered your aversion to Paris as merely a momentary mood; I did not know how strongly I should urge you, and I freely admit that I hurt you, for which I ask forgiveness. As far as the untimely joke with the Du is concerned, you shouldn't even have mentioned it; and you should have realized from the expression Hänschen that it was nothing more than a stupid bit of foolishness on my part; but I likewise ask for forgiveness. If you want to fulfill my last request, then look back once more on our whole life peacefully and without bitterness, and you will find that I was right and that both of us were happy and content with each other.
Now that I've summoned up enough strength to write you all this, seek what happiness you can in a permanent separation from me; I would have to reproach myself forever if I should interfere with your decision and press for a reconciliation with you. I gladly yielded to the desire of our friends to remain in Zürich a while longer, the more so since I would find it very difficult not to leave them, for their sympathy and love comforts me and cheers me in my sad position. But how long my stay here will be I cannot definitely say; just as little can I say where I'll then go to close my sorrowful life. If I go to Germany, I have no reason to keep our separation a secret from the world; I have done nothing for which it could condemn me. In Dresden I cannot live, I cannot see your relatives again! I don't want to share anything; I want to go into service or on the stage. Oh, it is terrible!
Only the last reproach in your letter is justified—that I cling to certain human beings and things; but I cling only to living ones; I cannot, like you, leave my bird and my little dog without breaking my heart for grief; they shall accompany me everywhere as long as I live. I should like to send you many affectionate greetings, but I'm no longer able to write; the pen slips from my hand.
Farewell! Farewell, dear Richard. Many kisses from
Your
Minna
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 94