I have received your letter: it was from your point of view thoroughly kind and just, but it again touched matters into which I can no longer enter, not because I am scornful or obstinate, but because I can stand no more of it! I am suffering from a life sickness which deprives me of all my vigor and leaves in its place a perpetual restlessness. This restlessness is multiplied into an all-destroying anxiety, which I unfortunately also feel each time a letter from you arrives. Nothing can cure me of it—but forgetting! I entreat you, have pity on me and make it easier for me to forget. Since I know that this is best, too, for your welfare, I implore you, comply with my urgent wish, and let us each find his own peace! Let us wish each other recovery, tranquillity, help in resignation, and let us occupy ourselves with what nature and reason offer to people sick of life—distraction and forgetfulness! Only then is recovery still possible! If you wish to, you may now lead a more pleasant and peaceful life than you led with me in the hard, stormy years of the past. You can do this if you seriously want it, and if success favors my endeavors always fully to care for your needs. . . . But now, dear, good Minna, make all this helpful to yourself, and don't question me any more. I painfully need the concentration of my terribly shattered and ruined mental powers: all my hope rests upon my full ability for work again; if ever I should lose it another time, I most firmly declare that life for me would have no sense or value any longer, and that I would try to end it.
So be considerate and understanding! I entreat, I implore you, it is now determined by fate that you can contribute to the preservation of my life by that highest consideration for my soul's peace!
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 266