On this date, dear Minna, I have decided to get myself put, not into a hydropathic establishment, but into a mad-house, for that seems the only proper place for me now! Whatever I say or write with the best intentions in the world, I stir up nothing but unhappiness and misunderstanding. If I am silent about certain things, I make you suspicious and jealous that I am doing something behind your back, and then if I write seriously and openly, and as I thought, ass that I am, at the same time quite reassuringly, I hear that I have been plotting with a refinement of malignity to get you under the sod with all speed! In the same breath I am told to be a man. Good, then, I will be not a man but your man; only tell me how I am to speak, think and look at the world; I will always shape my course in strict accordance and say nothing, think nothing and see nothing of which you do not approve. Will that satisfy you? Only always tell me, too, what and how I am to compose, write and conduct; I will be governed by you in everything so that you cannot doubt me a moment more. For everything I do of myself, in my way, you imagine does not really come from me but from someone or other who has an end to serve through me. Well, then, that shall be so no more. I shall never again look to right or left, and if you can still doubt that I am living for you only, that I love you and adore you, then it won't be my fault any longer. God knows if I have put you in a good humour with the above as I intended, or if you will think it more refined malignity on my part. I am in such doubt about everything I say and do that I may soon be carried about like a baby. But all that won't matter if only you will put these horrible fancies behind you and recognise that at least I have the best, most honourable intention of showing myself good, grateful, true and attached, loving and thoughtful to you. Or am I to end by being like Sulzer before his marriage and hating all women-kind in the mass and wishing there were none but men in the world? God in heaven, what am I to do, to content you?
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 352