Note 120 — Chapter I · THE MAN

The bitterness of the later years seems to have affected Wagner's memory of the earlier ones. In Mein Leben his thesis is that Minna was kind enough to him, but without love, and perhaps without the capacity for loving. That was not his opinion at the time, however. "Minna was here," he writes to Apel on 6th June 1835 from Leipzig, "and stayed three days for my sake, in the most dreadful weather, and without knowing a single other person, and without going anywhere, simply to be with me.... It is remarkable what influence I have acquired over the girl. You should read her letters; they burn with fire, and we both know that fire is not native to her" (Richard Wagner an Theodor Apel, p. 48).