Dear Minna,
I still call you so despite the signature of that last letter I received from you, in which you prayed me to address you next time with your "Sie." "Dear Minna!" so I call you in the heavy hour wherein I turn my face to you to-day; — so I called you e'er the worst and most irreparable dissonance had come between our souls; and so — if you will grant it me — shall you live for ever in my memory! —
Your letters to Bordeaux came as a violent shock to me, the wrench from a fair last — illusion about us. I believed I had won you at last, I dreamed I saw you yielding to the might of true affection, — and terrible was the grief wherewith I realised more infallibly than ever that we belong to each other no more. Thenceforth I could bear it no longer: I could talk with no one any more, — I wished to get away at once — to you; I left my friends in haste and sped to Paris, from thence to hurry back to Zurich. Well, I have been here a fortnight again: my old nerve-trouble overcame me; like an incubus it lies upon me, — I must shake it off, — I must, for my — for thy sake. —
Hear me out! The absolute discrepancy at bottom of our natures has shewn itself now milder, now more glaringly, the whole time we have known each other, to my distress — and in particular to yours. It is not I who need remind you of the countless scenes that have occurred between us from the earliest times, — for probably they live more vivid in your memory than in my own. What bound me to you then so irresistibly, however, was love; a love that looked beyond all difference, — but a love you did not share: certainly not, at least, to the degree in which it governed me. To my entreaties for our union you strictly yielded under nothing but compulsion: perhaps you felt towards me all that lay in you to feel, — only, the true root of the matter, that unquestioning Love which makes one bear all troubles with a smile, that Love with which we love another precisely as and for the thing he is, — that Love you could not feel; for even then you did not understand me, as you ever deemed I should be other than I am in truth. Since the reunion after that first breach in our wedlock you have strictly been guided by nothing save duty towards me, — it was duty bade you bear with me the hardships we endured in Paris, and even in your last letter but one you name nothing save duty regarding that period — not love. Had your heart then harboured genuine love towards me, you would never be boasting of endurance of those sufferings, but, in your firm belief in me and what I am, you would have recognised in them a necessity to which one submits for the sake of something higher; when one's mind is set on nothing but that Higher, is happy in the consciousness thereof, all lower sorrows one forgets. But you — of your very nature — at any rate have found no recompense, — you still see nothing save the sorrows! After my appointment at Dresden, your growing opposition to me appeared exactly at the epoch, and in degree as — forgetting my personal profit — I no longer was able to bow to the atrocious managerial relations of that art-establishment, and rebelled against them in the interest of my art and independence both as man and artist. Anyone who observed me closely and sought to understand me in that decisive period of my life, will be forced to admit that all I did was an inevitably direct consequence of my artistic nature, with which I kept faith notwithstanding all personal risks. That at last I revolted not only as artist, but also as man, against all those vicious conditions which none could regard as worse torture than I — with my passionate nature, — to anyone who watched me proceed step by step (not at a bound) to the standpoint I now occupy as artist and man, this must appear extremely explicable, and therefore also worthy of no blame. He would have had to acknowledge that in this I did not behave arbitrarily nor out of vanity, for he would have observed how I suffered under it; consequently he would have spoken me words of comfort and encouragement: and my wife would have done so, if she had chosen to take the pains to understand me; for which she by no means needed book-learning, but simply love!
When I came home profoundly vexed and agitated by some new annoyance, a fresh mortification, another failure, what did my Wife bestow on me in lieu of comfort and uplifting sympathy? Reproaches, fresh reproaches, nothing save reproaches! Home-keeping by nature, I remained in the house for it all; but at last no longer to express myself, convey my thoughts and receive invigoration, but to hold my tongue, let my trouble eat into my soul, and be — alone! This eternal restraint under which I had lived so long already, and which never allowed me to let myself quite go, on one side, without occasioning the fiercest scenes, weighed me down and wore away my health. What is the bodily tending, you by all means lavished on me, against the mental needed for a man of my inner excitableness! Does my wife remember, perhaps, how coldly she once prevailed upon herself to nurse me on a bed of sickness a whole week without affection, because she could not forgive me a hasty expression before my illness?
Enough! The fateful hour had struck: I had to flee and leave everything behind me. One wish alone had I, ere altogether quitting Germany: to see my wife once more! All else was indifferent to me, even the chance of my capture, — but without that one solace I would not depart. Neither to give me that solace, nor to receive consolation herself from a final embrace, did my wife at last determine to concede my plea, — but simply to humour an obstinate person into making off at last — admittedly, for his own safety. I shall never forget the night I was awoken in my place of refuge to welcome my wife: chill and reproachful she stood before me, and spake these words, "Well, as you insisted, I've come; now perhaps you'll be satisfied! So get on with your journey; I must be starting back myself to-night." At Jena at last I succeeded in moving you to a hearty warm farewell: that farewell was my comfort when afar. I had only one thought: prompt, instant reunion; with the full heat of my soul did I beg you for it in my letters. Then at last, in the country near Paris, I received that deplorable letter whose heartless unlovingness froze me to ice: you declared you had no mind to rejoin me till I could support you abroad by my earnings; you further expressed to me plainly, that you had lost all love for me. — All that happened afterwards will be still fresh in your memory. You wrote me again, announcing your decision to come to me at Zurich: I therefore might hope anew. Eh, I nursed the hope of being able to win you wholly to myself at last, convince you of the truth of my ideas, make you more familiar with me in the end. Unremitting were my efforts to smooth your outer path. You came, — how happy I was! And yet — unhappy me! — not to myself had you come, to cast in your lot with me just as I was, — but to that Wagner who, as you supposed, would soon be composing an opera for Paris! In Dresden you had been ashamed to say you were joining me in Switzerland, but gave out you were going to Paris, and your husband — as you apparently believed yourself — had a contract all signed in his pocket. O, the huge mistake between us two was bound to reveal itself more every day! All my sentiments and views remained a horror to you, — my writings you abominated, though I tried to explain to you that they were more needful to me for the present than any bootless opera-writing. Every person with whose opinions I did not agree, you championed; all those of like opinion with myself you condemned, — I durst not so much as excuse them to you. For our former conditions you ever repined; the only light in which you viewed the future, was a reconciliation with them, or — a Paris success. My whole being was an object of aversion to you; at every instant, ah! almost with every movement, I was bound to do something you did not approve. — In short, I realised at length my boundless solitude with you, since I saw how impossible it was to win you to me. Just to procure myself peace with you, I resumed my Paris plans more seriously. The inner constraint of it, the odious battling with my own conviction, the impossibility of making myself understood by my nearest surroundings, there to find solace, help and counsel, — all this engendered in me states of soul which could but sorely aggravate my bodily ill-health through adding sickness of the mind. I was still debating if I really meant to go to Paris in such a state; weak and tottering as I was, the last Sunday I approached you and said, "Minna, oughtn't I to wait for another letter from Belloni first?" But you were weary of the long delay — for with you it had never been a question of anything save Paris; also you wanted to have the parlour scoured at last and the whole apartment cleaned. In short — this time again you didn't understand poorest me, and answered my enquiry in a huff; so that, feeble and ill, I braved wind and weather, booked my place there and then, and at all events had made my mind up, for I knew what a life I should lead if I tried to remain. —
Here in Paris, amid torments of all kinds, at the sight of this shameful huckstering with art I firmly resolved to renounce once for all what to me was impossible, and irrevocably turn my back on the whole bag of tricks. I had only one care — not for myself, but for you — the care about our livelihood. And lo! a bond of friendship of the rarest and most exalting kind had forged itself, — that care was suddenly removed from me: you yourself had been the first to hear it. Then I wrote you from Bordeaux, how I knew but one remaining happiness, to go on living quietly with you at Zurich for the health of both of us, and so be able to create after my own heart.
Your letter tore it all to shreds: you stand before me unappeasable — seeking honour where I almost see disgrace, and feeling shame at what I deem most welcome. As said, not to me did you come to Zurich, but to the composer of a new opera on order for Paris. Yes, now I understand all!
You refer me to a previous letter, — I know it: it's that letter of last year! You are true to yourself! — In every line it stands clear and distinct that you do not love me, for you mock at every single thing I'm fond of, even at the Du which — following my inner bent — I like best to call whoever isn't to remain a stranger to me. — So, what can my love be now? Only the wish, in reward for the youth you passed in vain with me, for the hardships you've surmounted with me, to make you happy. Can I so much as hope to attain that by living with you? — Impossible!
Source: Richard to Minna Wagner: Letters to His First Wife, trans. William Ashton Ellis, Vol. 1 (H. Grevel & Co., 1909), No. 36