[...] The true origins of my sickness and loathing of life are discoveries recently made as to the superficiality of the sympathy of even the most sympathetic persons! These days I wait in anguish from hour to hour for the coming of the postman to bring me some sort of reply to my urgent appeals, both to you and Standhartner, for news of the state of my affairs after I left. Standhartner is good enough to-day to forward letters addressed to me at Penzing and yet adds not a word, not a greeting of his own! Can't you understand that this is bound to alarm me even more than the worst of news? Or does no one write simply because you all wish to avoid the pain of telling me something painful? [...]
My future course entirely depends on how the past is settled; it is from this that I must deduce what lies before me. If things continue as disastrously bad as they have been hitherto, I must cease to expect any good and I have already come to feel that every hope is vain. Anyone taking my age and past history into consideration would feel that it is extremely doubtful if, in this frame of mind, which naturally sickens me of life, I can possibly delight in artistic creation. [...]
My situation is perilous; I balance on the narrowest foothold—one push and all is over—there will be nothing more to be got out of me then, nothing, nothing more!—
Some light must show itself, someone must arise to give me vigorous help now, and then I shall still have strength to recompense that help—but later I shall not, I feel it!—
My friend, Switzerland has become for me a cemetery, and I should have done better to go anywhere else than here, where all is bitter to me and speaks of death.
And yet nowhere else could I have met the one person, the one human creature who could do me good at present, my hostess, the one and only Frau Dr. Wille! This lady is above all praise, incomparable, unique. What can be done is done to offer me a pleasant refuge well adapted for work. She even makes an effort to raise at least enough money for me to dare to hope to be able to pay my local creditors something shortly, and thus do something to improve the apparent shamefulness of my departure from Penzing. [...]
But perhaps—it is all no use now! Indeed, I feel deep within me that the end approaches. Ill-health does its worst to rivet this mood. I am languid again and much afflicted by my bladder troubles. [...] As I have said, some benevolent saving miracle must come to me, otherwise all is over!—
Your terrible silence seems to tell me that this blessed miracle is on its way! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 568