"[...] (excuse me but I am so exhausted that I only talk to you about vulgar things) I've had an idea for a play that I don't think is bad, I told Peter about it, he seems to want to do it with me. In summary here is my idea (but silence of the tomb): A couple who adore each other, immense, pious, pure (without being chaste of course) affection of the husband for his wife. But this husband is sadistic and outside of his love for his wife has liaisons with prostitutes with whom he takes pleasure in defiling his own finer feelings. And in the end the sadist, feeling ever stronger and stronger urges finally comes to defile his wife by talking to those prostitutes, abusing her and making them abuse her too (five minutes later he is heartbroken). On one occasion while he is saying such things his wife comes into the room without him hearing her, she cannot believe her ears or her eyes, falls in a dead faint. Then she leaves her husband. He begs her, nothing comes of it. The prostitutes want to come back but now that sort of sadism is too painful for him, and after a final attempt to bring his wife back, to which she doesn't even reply, he kills himself."
Letter to Reynaldo Hahn, 18 or 19 September 1906. Corr. VI,
p.216.
Created 19.12.20