[...] I am utterly solitary and live almost exclusively on imagined and remembered contacts. Wide as this circle is, you are often to the fore in it. [...]
Father Geyer's portrait is always before me now, on my desk. An acquaintance, a friend of Hermann Brockhaus's sons, went from Zurich to Leipzig and took a splendidly successful and remarkable photograph from the portrait with which he very much surprised and gratified me on his return. It was one of the very few things that I took with me on my departure from Zurich. It serves as a sort of link with the world, wherein otherwise a sense of detachment and loneliness preponderates. [...]
[...] The real cause of the nameless afflictions and shocks which have been my portion in recent years was my wife's sad state of health. Incredibly rash and passionate as was her behaviour in circumstances calling for the greatest delicacy, I cannot, after all, be really angry with her. Everyone suffers in his own way and she in hers, but her sufferings are particularly acute. One has only to imagine a heart beating incessantly in a manner which most of us only experience in moments of deadly fear, added to that, a year of dreadful sleeplessness! One cannot possibly hold a fellow-creature who suffers such torments responsible for all that he does in a state of semi-madness. Nevertheless our life together at last became intolerable. In order to keep on I had to seek fresh strength in solitude and that I knew Minna, too, would be the better for change and such distraction as was possible. She really seems to be somewhat better in Dresden; although I learn to my sorrow that she has again fallen under the influence of tale-bearers. Now that I have recovered a little calm and composure I am determined always to treat her with the care and gentleness which her condition most urgently requires if it is to be improved, being as it is materially influenced by her state of mind. Her life is put so utterly into my hand that I, who could speedily bring about her death, must naturally stretch out that hand only in care for her. [...]
[...] I think of spending next winter with Minna. Where? That must depend very much on her state of health. In any case I must look out for a mild southern climate. But it is all quite unsettled. I loathe Paris. Venice suits me very well for the present. I live here remote from the world, between sky and sea, in great seclusion. Unfortunately I have often been ill, not seriously, perhaps, but most depressingly. I think of remaining here till June.—
At your convenience, ask Edward if he would be so kind as to consider and—if it is not troubling him too much—to let me know how I could best and most successfully bring the poem of my Nibelungen Ring before the public. I cannot avoid the conviction that this poem should excite notice and lasting regard as a purely literary work. To this end, however, the format of the edition must contribute, and Härtel's conception and working out of such things as mere adjuncts of printed musical works do not seem to me at all appropriate. Please ask Edward about it! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 390