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 don't 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?—[...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 352