Tell me, dear friend, how could you possibly have so overlooked me this summer? [...] So you have lived in and with me through the most terrible and wonderful periods of my life in closest confidence, felt with me, suffered with me, to abandon me suddenly and completely at an important climax!—How remarkable! What food for thought it gives one!—
Now, what shall I tell you about myself? I spoke of an "important" climax; I did not say a "happy" one. Perhaps you guessed that here, too, on this eminence, there was nothing but pain and suffering for me, and you were suffering too much to spare me your pity?—
There was a brief period in which I really thought I was dreaming, it was so wonderfully well with me. That was the time of the Tristan rehearsals.
Here, for the first time in my life, I and my art in all its completeness, lay, as it were, upon a pillow of love. It was to be so for once! All the studio arrangements were noble, ample, free and generous. Then came a marvellous, heaven-sent pair of artistes [the Schnorrs], entirely versed in their task, devoted, wonderfully gifted. My faithful guardian angel, hovering above me beautiful and beneficent, full of childlike delight in my content, my joy in the growing achievement, perpetually ordered matters to my use, and removed hindrances with an unseen hand. The work grew like a magical vision to unhoped-for reality; the first performance (without audience, only for ourselves), called a dress-rehearsal, was like a fulfilment of the impossible.
The sense of dreaming never left me. I wondered and wondered how this could come within the range of experience! That was the lovely climax and yet embittered by—absences!—Embittered, indeed! How petty you all seem to me for—avoiding this emotion!—
Ever since—nothing but sheer suffering. As I really take no heed to so-called "success," all subsequent experiments (for as such they count) before the public were simply troubling and humiliating to me. At the fourth performance—during the last act—I was seized with a feeling of the sacrilege of this unheard-of achievement and I cried, "This is the last performance of Tristan, and it must never be given again!" Now that is fulfilled. My glorious singer left us rejoicing, glad and happy in his pride and satisfaction. Eight days later I sped to Dresden to be present at his burial; "flying gout" is what they call the devilish thing that passed suddenly from his knee to his brain. There he lay—. Since then the world looks sad to me. I was lonely in the high hills, and now I am lonely here. I cannot see anyone and am supposed to be away. The King's wonderful love keeps me alive; he cares for me as never one man cared for another, I come to life in him and will still create for him. For myself, I really live no longer. Yet he keeps everything away from me which reminds me of life and actuality; I can only still dream and create.
So it is and so it will continue to be. My passion for work absorbs all my thoughts. The Nibelungs shall be finished now. A Parsifal is already sketched out. It is all marvellous, dreamlike; otherwise everything would be mortally painful. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 609