[...] The other day, struck by a sudden thought, I felt I must write and charge you with having overlooked a highly poetical trait in your Columbus. I read somewhere that Columbus, tired out by the endless vexations of the Spanish Court, would long before have attempted to leave Spain, but for a love-affair which detained him and most poetically and romantically supported him in his oppressed condition; that, strengthened in the arms of love, he perpetually renewed his capacity to endure and to do, so that when the futilities of the Court threatened to break his spirit he would go to Cordova and embrace his sweetheart, who, for her part, gave a brave and enthusiastic love to the brave and enthusiastic adventurer, despite his greying hairs, and bore him a son, Fernando. She kept him fast in Spain and gave him renewed strength to accomplish his task, so that love rather than politics gave Spain the glory of the discovery. A glorious love! Love gives me more strength than all the concepts of morality. A high-flown, sentimental mistress would enervate me now, but mine makes me glad and gay. On all sides renunciation leers at me now; who wants to embitter this one delight for me?
I am always extending my activities now. I write for money. I have now become a contributor to the new musical journal. If I break down, God's will be done. I weep no more. I shall never go to Leipzig again. What is Mendelssohn doing? [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 23