You wanted to come to me for the first weeks of this year; why don't you come? [...] Not a drop of wine has passed my lips for eight weeks. I stay at home and work and the composition of my opera was complete by New Year's Eve, and I now work at the instrumentation all night long! My opera is to be produced at the end of February—I am to get the takings of the second night as honorarium. Come and hear what I have to expect—you only know the weakest so far! Between now and then, however, I perish. I have struggled on five months, but it is no longer possible—I am being ruined. My creditors will not be put off by talk of my opera. I must have money, if I am not to go distracted and if the few thalers which I save each time from my salary are not to be taken away by distraint! Oh, how can I make you see all this? You only know of such wretchedness by hearsay! Don't give me anything, but buy up the receipts for my opera. If you have faith you are just the one who has nothing to fear by that. I estimate the value at 100 thalers—will you give me so much for it? The sale is in good faith, and I only apply to you because I think I have the right to expect of you the greatest trust in the result. If I don't get the money within the month I dare not appear here any more. It is too maddening and more than I am able to bear. If you wanted to prove me—well, then, I have done and suffered what is humanly possible for five months—but more is not possible!
Forgive me for filling my letter up with this, but when this common misery oppresses me I have no mind left for intellectual interests. I don't know what to write to you about—arts seem to me foolish and trifling. I write to no one and you are the only one to whom I can write like this. My family know nothing, they have cut me off from them. Besides yours, I know only one true heart and without that [Minna's] I should already have perished. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 30