My good Minna,
I have just received your telegram of to-day, and at once fulfil your wish that I should write to you. O my God! had I only the power to let you look into my inner heart and clearly see my sufferings and battlings of this year to win repose for my life-task! In vain: all stormed and tossed around me, all passion and blind rage; and whatever I laboriously built up to safeguard peace and quietness, came toppling down again. — You, my dear child, can make light of all that: you help yourself out with reproaches, perceive none but your own misfortune. I am juster: I lay reproaches on no one, nor — of a truth — on yourself. Much was required of you, and in your terribly tormented state of health, too much. So let us part in peace and reconciliation now, each to go his own way for a season, to win composure and fresh mustering of strength. For my own part, solitude, removal from all company, is now an indispensable condition of my life; the dearest society, even such as we lately had at home, only tortures me.
I am bleeding from many wounds, and heartfelt concern for yourself is not their slightest. Further, I feel the urgent need of winding up a whole life; I must clear my mind on much that has passionately moved me in this latter time, and above all I must take undisturbed counsel with myself how to find peace and quiet for completion of those works I still may be appointed to deliver to the world. Where last year I believed that I had found asylum, it is impossible any longer; years would need to elapse, before everything had cleared and subsided. For the present, I have but one need, as said: to be left alone and long in undisturbed possession of my inner self; any contact from without confuses and confounds afresh. A little outward distraction, such as the visiting of a remarkable city and so forth, can only be a help toward that: I can more easily be alone and without company there; whereas it would have been impossible in the long run where we were last. Thus I hope for — inner convalescence and emancipation; and once the mood for work returns to me, I shall be rescued, since my solace in this life can only flow from my own inner being. Lay this to heart, my dear Minna, and if you wish to support me in my necessary and salutary resolve, please do not make my heart too heavy through your cries and lamentations. I know you are more dependent upon what comes to you from without, so to speak, and consequently more a plaything of the chance and change of outward fortunes; therefore you have a very hard time with me, who am often so indifferent and callous to life's outward relations: but do obey me now, and hope with me for improvement in your state of suffering by the thorough change of scene which stands before you. It is natural that you should refuse to believe it at present, but I know better, and all who have the least experience of such a thing know that your stay in Germany, the renewal of old acquaintanceships, the distractions and art-enjoyments now in store for you, will have a more beneficial effect on you than anything else conceivable. For this reason, too, I can now depart from you with a grain of comfort: I know I shall receive good and better news from you in a little while. Any other expedient would have proved inadequate; a radical step such as this had to be taken perforce. So may God bless you, my good old Minna! Be strong and win self-control; bear this trial nobly and as befits the character of Woman! Thus shall we be able soon, I hope, to send one another good news of our inner condition.
Let us patiently leave the rest to Fate; if we only can rescue our inner peace, the world without will also shape itself quite peaceably. —
And now I beg you once more, shorten this worst hour of yours as much as possible; only with great grief can I think of you as still within those walls which saw us at the last so frequently in passionate dissension, and I therefore also was so glad to quit. Set forth as soon as possible.
As to my own farther journey, I can't well settle anything as yet. The great heat is against one's going straight to Italy, where I should like to be soon, however, to find the point to fix myself as speedily as possible and get to work. I intend waiting for Ritter's opinion. Meanwhile, I have letters to write, proofs to correct, and a copy of my text to see to; which gives me a certain amount of occupation. I should be unable to tax myself much just yet, there's an aching weight in all my limbs; but — rest will come! Ah, if you would only help me to it also! You can, if you will write me shortly with a little self-control, and tell me you are on the road I deem so needful and alone essential now for your inner recovery. Believe my word, dear Minna, had I not been inwardly convinced that the decision I have had to come to will be wholesome and beneficial to yourself as well, I gladly would have hit upon some other. But everything had been exhausted, we were wearing each other away, and a break was obliged to be made for its promise of thorough healing and improvement. If you are not totally unlike myself, you must also come to feel that in the end: I cannot help it, only thus do I expect good for us both!
And now farewell, you good old Mutz! Greet Fipsel a thousand times; I left him to you willingly, although I miss him very much. But — miss I must now! Greet Jacquot too, and tell him good of me. Farewell; control yourself, and tell me, for my consolation, that you are calmer. Adieu: with God!
Thy Richard.
Source: Richard to Minna Wagner: Letters to His First Wife, trans. William Ashton Ellis, Vol. 1 (H. Grevel & Co., 1909), No. 142