Dear Minna! I cannot help writing to you once again before going so far away from you. I do not know, and indeed would not wish to know, how you have taken the news which I sent you in my last letter of the decisive step I contemplate. Since you have so often accustomed yourself to the thought of living apart from me and recovering your independence I suppose, and hope too, that though you may perhaps be surprised, you will not be horrified at my decision. I for my part live in the hope that, in parting, our mutual remembrance of our past life together will grow pleasanter and perhaps even more consolatory than it could do if we continued together the joyless and galling existence which the continual friction of our different and mutually opposed natures might have inflicted upon us. The news I have to tell you to-day, however, gave me a special reason for writing to you once more, since I feel it may soften for you any possible bitterness in our parting. I am upon the point of setting out for Marseilles, whence I shall go at once by an English ship to Malta and thence on to Greece and Asia Minor. I have always felt the need of getting away from a mere life of books and ideas, so unprofitable for me, to see something of the world again. The modern world is closed against me for the present, for I detest it and want to have no more to do with it nor with what is nowadays called "art" there. Germany can afford me no stimulus till all the conditions of life there are radically altered. So now is the time to satisfy my longing for far travel, to withdraw completely for a time from our present-day conditions and to refresh myself physically and spiritually by change of scene and sound and travel in other climes. During this recent critical time I conceived a plan of going to Greece and the East and am now so fortunate as to have the means to carry it out placed at my disposal from London. I have in fact found a new patron in London, one of the most eminent English lawyers, who knows my work and is affording me his support upon a certain condition, namely the possession of the original manuscript of everything I may yet write.
Let us then now remain apart! If we keep our health, if times and conditions change, we may surely hope to see each other again. But for the present separation will do us good! You will soon receive from London what you need to live upon.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 175