My very dear friend,
Cosima maintains that you would not come, even if I were to invite you. That is something we should have to endure, as we have had to endure so much else! But I cannot forbear to invite you. And what is it that I call out to you when I say “Come”? You entered my life as the greatest man to whom I have ever been allowed to address myself on terms of intimate friendship; you slowly moved away from me, perhaps because I had become less close to you than you were to me. In your place there came your innermost being, born anew, and it was she who fulfilled my yearning desire to know you close to me. Thus you live before me and within me in perfect beauty, and we are as one beyond the grave itself. You were the first man to ennoble me through his love; I am now wedded to a second, higher life through her, and can achieve what I could never have achieved alone. Thus you could be everything to me, whereas I could only ever be so very little to you: what a tremendous advantage I have over you!
If I now say to you: “Come”, what I mean by this is: “Come to yourself”! For you will find yourself here. - Whatever your decision, you have my blessing and my love!
Your old friend
Richard.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 408