[...] I am very unhappy and want to make my plaint to someone! But I dare not turn to any womanly heart, for I should only give it more pain for its own helplessness than I could get comfort for myself. That is, after all, the hardest thing to endure, to know oneself so utterly alone in one's troubles and anxieties and to have to decide everything by oneself. Then it came upon me like a whisper from Heaven that I have found you, now! You will understand me, and I can unburden my heart's sorrow a little to you.—Friend, it is quite certain now that I cannot possibly live with my wife any longer! You do not know how utterly everything is expressed in these few words. My heart bleeds, and yet I realise that I must fight vigorously against soft-heartedness, for the only possible salvation lies in firmness and frankness.
You know how greatly I yearned to get back to domestic routine, and that I believed I could attain it only through reunion with my wife. Well, while I was sadly trying to arrange my quarters here in Biebrich for the winter, my wife, knowing my necessity, suddenly decided to do somewhat as you did, and, instead of answering my letter, walked into my room just as I had settled my scanty establishment. My heart leapt, and in my great and joyous emotion she soon saw how it was with me. I reproached her with not having brought her parrot and come at once prepared to stay permanently, instead of which she had only come for a week to help me to settle down. Still, we at once discussed setting up house definitely in Wiesbaden. She looked bright and well, which was evidence to me of how she always improves by degrees when she is on her own, and follows her inclination as to friends and manner of life wholly undisturbed by me. How I planned to find some way of establishing a lasting and tolerable life together by means of all kinds of wise conventions and indulgences, despite our totally opposed tastes, characters and outlook! It is true that from the very first day I felt our terrible misfortune in having no young thing to act as a link between us two, and realised that, being thrown so entirely upon each other's company by my taste for seclusion, we were inevitably exposed to perpetual friction. Still, my intentions were so good that I was quite willing to talk to her again in the queer make-believe language one uses to children and to listen with feigned interest to things which were quite outside my beat and often actually repellent to me. I tried with all my might to suppress a strange dread of that conscience in us which will not tolerate untruth, and fell asleep the first night in the peaceful belief that it would be possible to make the arrangement last. Next morning Fate intervened in a most remarkable way, leaving me this time all amazed before an ocular demonstration of its powers. Listen!
Since our last meeting in Venice, there had accidentally been a considerable intermission in the correspondence between my friend Mme. Wesendonck and myself. Everything is so well understood between us and settled on a basis of complete abnegation that I only write to her now in a pleasant and friendly vein, the more so that friendship with her husband (a most upright man but—personal relations apart—one who bores me) had become so insupportable that I have given up any more regular personal intercourse with the pair, and only maintain a somewhat superficial interchange of letters, chiefly in order to ameliorate her hard life a little. In these last restless and difficult days I have preferred to be altogether silent. Thus it happened that my friend had heard nothing at all of my journey to Paris and addressed a little Christmas present to me at Vienna, which, after many wanderings, was eventually returned to her in Zurich. Later I wrote once from Paris, and told her of my proposed removal to the Rhine, whereupon she wrote telling me about the misadventures of her Christmas present and begging me later to give her my address on the Rhine, so that she might direct her parcel there. This I did while I was still in Mainz. For a long time I was without news. Then she wrote me a short letter saying that she had been in Düsseldorf to her mother's funeral, and I immediately sent her my deepest condolences. For these she thanked me at length, also for sending her The Mastersingers, and told me that she was just sending off the belated Christmas present. This letter arrived on the second day, and the parcel on the third day, of my wife's stay with me, and both fell at once into the unhappy creature's hands. Incapable of seeing my relations with that lady in anything but a disagreeably vulgar light, she refused to understand my explanations, which I gave purely to tranquillise her, and gave vent to her feelings in that vulgar style which, in turn, made me lose all self-control. She attributed my violence to the continuance of that lady's emotional influence over me, and—the whole insane edifice stood there again, unshaken and clear as daylight, before my eyes! I felt as if I should go out of my senses. Here was this woman, exactly at the point at which she stood four years ago—word for word, exactly the same outpourings, the same vulgar tone!—The storm over, I pulled myself together again. I wanted to regard it as a last thunderstorm of delusion before the weather cleared—to go on hoping and to gainsay no possibility. Now, however, the whole misery of the thing reappeared in good earnest. Jealousy, suspicion, ill-constructions put on every word! Added to that, our complete isolation here—long winter evenings alone with a being who does not understand my real nature in the slightest. If I take up a book, she cannot do likewise, she has no way of occupying herself. There was I, wanting nothing but quiet and peace of mind, yearning for my work, making terrible efforts to deal with my necessitous circumstances and my hard lot, and in addition unpleasantly affected by every word from without, gossip and the like. Finally, my wife's heart trouble began to come on again! Those were ten days in hell, and yet these horrible ten days have at least served as a final warning, and I cannot but be amazed that this grave warning should have come, in all innocence, through my friend Frau Wesendonck!
You may imagine how firmly resolved I am now! Curiously enough, it is always difficult for my wife (who, indeed, must equally find her hell in my company) to maintain in her calmer moments views which she seems to entertain only in moments of violence. When this time I heard her suddenly begin to talk again about setting up house, horror seized me! Ah, what misery to let such wretchedness go on so long! My wife will manage, for I shall always leave her the advantage of appearances! An actual divorce from her is and remains an impossibility to me. It is too late, and the cruelty of such a proceeding appals me. Accordingly, I have decided on the following way out. From next autumn my wife is to settle in Dresden with our furniture and household goods, apart from the few things I have here, and to keep a room reserved "for me." Under the—actually valid—pretext that I need a retreat for quiet work, I shall continue to maintain a small lodging such as I at present occupy and—perhaps—visit my wife at times for a couple of weeks. This is what we shall give out to prevent things looking too serious! But how favourable must be the conditions if we are to carry out such an arrangement with even tolerable comfort! What it really means is that a man who is scarcely equal to supporting one establishment will have to run two. For I make no secret of it—my affairs are becoming more and more desperate! I can no longer help myself. The gulf between myself and the so-called musical world widens. My friend, I am unfit to meet others now! Whenever I meet a kapellmeister, or a theatrical manager, or even a man like Raff, I cross myself and try to creep away into some corner where I can be my own man. What am I to do about Schott's? I feel as if I shall not be able to help defrauding them utterly! My sole remaining hope is the young Grand Duke of Baden; in him there is native nobility of feeling, happily combined with an open and free intelligence. The man knows how things are with me, and is of the opinion that I ought never to have to ask for money for my works. Well, he is not rich nor powerful enough, and yet I am sure that very soon I shall get the one thing I need through him—somehow. And even now it is a comfort to be able to talk to him without disguise. What I should like is that he should take me up personally, and see that my life and work are provided for in naturalibus. I would then assign my wife a small pension. But, however this question of a livelihood is solved, even if fortunately, it will, I fear, be very hard for me to set my mind at rest about the real rankling sore of my life. I have such a terrible amount of compassion in me. It is awful to me to know that anyone is suffering through me!
Therefore, it cost me a really extraordinary effort to bring myself to see reason. I have seen with my own eyes that on any conditions my wife is better away from me than with me. Indeed, I clearly perceive that there is no real feeling of love for me in her. She only recognises the injustice done to her, and is inwardly quite incapable of ever forgiving it. But that is just how things are—the world we perceive lies within us. I picture it as different, however, and knowing the pain of true sadness, of deep love, my own heart bleeds. Ever since yesterday, when I left the unhappy woman in Frankfort, still angry and thinking only of herself, it has rankled in me and only the clearest consciousness that softness can only prolong the sufferings of both, has ultimately brought me—resignation.—O God! I grow sorrowful even to tears and say, "Oh for some kind woman creature to take me gently to her heart!!" But I am closing that door against myself now! And so, I think, all my wife's sorrows are revenged! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 519