[...] It is true I am on the point of coming to Leipzig and of seeing and talking to you, yet to-day I know no other way of combating the remorseless pressure of sorrow and anxiety—I must write to you to-day—this very hour. The tears stream from my eyes, just as they used to do in my boyhood when I had offended someone I loved and had to ask forgiveness. Theodore, what have I come to? What has become of that free, glorious vitality which we used mutually to kindle in each other? Where is the future we strove for with such a proud assurance of victory? Perhaps it has all come to you—even more beautiful in fulfilment—I don't know, for we have heard nothing of each other for half a year—but I suppose it, I hope it, I wish it. You have found a better friend, a friend you can respect more, prize more, one who must be more to you than your old Richard! Oh, I can write no more for tears—why do I still give way to this over-sensibility! I have been to Teplitz again, Theodore, and kept a sorrowful anniversary there. I have been in Prague again, too, and there spoke with the mistresses of Count Baar and Baron Bethman—whom we used to know by the names of Jenny and Auguste [Raymann]. I have been in Karlsbad, too—and oh, I have been in Würzburg! My girl [Friederike Galvani] had in the meantime been confined—a country bumpkin had been my fortunate rival! Theodore, Theodore, how my luck has left me since you left me! Oh for one only sign that Fortune still favours me, and I would try to woo life again! I have lost sight of everything—everything—poetry flees from me and a desert of worthless truth stretches endlessly before me! My God, I feel as if all the flowers of youth vanish before me, as if this chill life crowns my temples like a frost, forbidding all warmth and love! Oh, can it be that I have already enjoyed all that I am destined to enjoy? Is my life over? Yes, yes—I have sinned—and yet I have not! Does one sin when one is mad? I have fallen out with my family and must believe our relationship dissolved—I have even brought things to this pass! I know Leipzig no more—I shall never be there again for any length of time! All that I have left me is a mother who loves me dearly—naught else! Theodore—have I still a friend? Have I still your love, your trust? Oh, tell me, tell me, what do you think of me? To lose so noble, so splendid a spirit means much—to me it means that all is lost! If you too were to misjudge me!—and, by God, Theodore, it would not be impossible, for it would need an immense staunchness on your side, and from your point of view, not to wonder what to make of me!—Ah, I must feel all that, and yet can only turn back to you! If you cast me off, then farewell, fair world!
Ah, what a relief—I have wept my eyes out—I have not been able to do that for a long time—the tears gushed forth like a splendid reviving thunder-shower after long drought and heat. I am a little calmer now and will write to you more calmly. Up to now I have badly mismanaged my life. My dearest, I was not wicked, I was mad; that is the only way I can express my conduct—it was a madness about the conventions! I see now only too well that money is no chimera, no despicable, worthless non-essential. I have become convinced that money has become as truly a living entity as the social organism of which a man is perforce a member. I was mad, I say, because I did not understand myself and my relation to the world. I knew that I had not the slightest assured support or stay, and yet behaved like a lunatic, exceeded my means in every direction, with in addition all the ignorance and inexperience of a man who has never had any solid title to money! No one, not even the rich, throw money away as I did. The result has been a regular maelstrom of perplexity and misery, the complexities of which I can only view with dismay, I simply cannot reckon up the details clearly; it is unheard of and inexplicable into what an abyss I have fallen. Your great and incessant efforts to save me from it only made me the bolder and brought me to trust in a blind something, of which I could give myself no clear account, but which clouded my eyes ever more and more. My life in Leipzig, the wretched position I occupied there, was an intolerable burden to me. It drove me to exhibitions of strength and independence, so called. I broke out into extravagant pranks, the result of which, added to the persistent aftermath of earlier follies, was a complete break with my family and, finally, a rupture with all my circle. What my better self, the artistic genius in me, suffered through all this, is inexpressible! [...] If I could be free now of all the consequences of my perpetual follies, I could face my fate calmly. I have now assured a safe and sound provision for my immediate future, and with the fruits of these experiences and the conviction won therefrom that I must henceforth depend on myself and my own strength in order to redeem the past, I can now hope to walk in a new way. But I cannot visit Magdeburg again till I have got rid of a burden of debt amounting to 400 thalers. That is my position—abandoned by and separated from everyone, everyone on whom I might otherwise count, only still followed by my mother's painful anxiety—and she can give me nothing. You are the only one to whom I can still appeal, and I dare to tell you this without fear of angering you and making you turn from me [...] Do not think of our present situation as a mere chance of life—see it as an event of the greatest importance in your life and mine, and indeed it is that, it is my second birth. Believe that if my spirit should some day blossom richly and fully (I despair of it at the moment), it shall not be concealed from the world who rescued it. [...]
[...] I have made my confession—it is for you to give absolution. I hope I may be able to leave here to-morrow, and I shall come to you a day after this letter. How will you receive me? I ought to arrive in Magdeburg on the 28th of this month. It depends on you whether I can do so! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 22