Believe me, dear and esteemed friend, I have to keep a tight hold over myself just to go on enduring! Every hour almost I have to say to myself "Steady! steady!" or I should go to pieces altogether!—The only thing left for me is isolation, utter solitude. That is my one comfort, my one relief. And yet it is so unnatural, particularly for me, who love to impart myself, wholly and unreservedly, to others. Only—everything about me is unnatural now. I know not family, relations—children; my marriage has been nothing but a test of patience and compassion. I can think of no friend to whom I can give my whole confidence without regretting it; I learn better every day how everlastingly I am misunderstood in greatest and in least. [...]
Everything is strange and cold around me! Not one comfort, not a look, not a soothing word. I have sworn to myself not even to get a dog. I am not to have the Beloved even near me. She has her children, after all!
Ah, but that is not a reproach, only a lament, and I think she is content to take me as I am and feels for my sorrow! I have my art, of course! True, that gives me no joy, however, and horror seizes me when I look out from my work to the world to which, after all, it must belong and which can yet accept it only in a vilely mutilated form. [...]
And how sweetly she helps me! What a heavenly letter that was that you sent me from her to-day! The dear lovely creature—may she find comfort! Her friend is true to her, lives only through her—and can therefore endure!
Yes! It must be borne somehow—and it shall!—I tell myself that Venice will help me [...] I have no real life here as yet; there can be no question of that till I am at work again and I am still waiting for the piano! Let this suffice you for a description of the terrain upon which I have to make up my mind to live. [...]
[...] The only soul I speak to is Ritter, who is silent enough never to disturb me; he too is alone, his wife having remained behind. [...]
But what still gives my inner and outer life so strange, almost dream-like, a character is its complete lack of future. [...]
Greet the dear angel a thousand times!—and she will not despise the tender tears I shed, either! And enter into it all yourself through the power of your noble friendship! We are happy [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 368