Oh friend,
You really are causing me nothing but worry, but it is because I care so very much for you! Strictly speaking, you are the only real gain that life has brought me, and second only to my wife in that respect: fortunately, of course, I now have Fidi, too; but I need a link between him and me, and only you can forge that link, much as the son is linked to the grandchild. I am not worried about Fidi, but about you, and to that extent my worry also affects Fidi. It is a thoroughly bourgeois concern: I should like nothing more than to see you well like the rest of us, since everything else seems to be perfectly safe with you. I have been carefully rereading the “Birth” on consecutive mornings; and I kept on telling myself: “if only he could get well again and remain so, and if everything else were to go well for him, - for things may not go wrong for him!” How we should like to be able to contribute something here!
But we then stop to think how best to set about doing so, and - it is precisely this that worries us. However: - just hold out a little longer, and all will turn out well in the end. I am growing immensely confident, and my worries always end up as hopes, particularly when I discover that you, too, have confidence in yourself, that you are reassured as to your health, and that you are in good spirits.
I cannot see that I have blazed a trail for you with my “Letter”, and am bound to suppose that I have merely hung an additional burden around your neck; nor did I mean to say that you should “ripen” into your task, but only that it would keep you fully occupied for the whole of your life.
But “Tristan” will certainly be of interest to you: only: spectacles off! You must hear nothing but the orchestra. - Adieu! My dear, true friend! Shall we see each other again soon? -
Yours,
Rich. Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 409