Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of January 15, 1869

Overview

Cosima’s entry moves between maternal longing and her deepening sense that her life has become bound to Richard’s solitude, leaving her torn between devotion to him and fear of estrangement from her older children. The day is marked by quiet apprehension, with Richard’s gloom, talk of possible war, and the surrounding political silence making even domestic peace at Tribschen feel fragile and temporary. A walk through the frost-lit landscape opens into metaphysical reflection, as nature’s beauty turns her thoughts toward transience, eternity, and the possibility that earthly sorrow may still conceal a higher meaning. The day closes in a gentler register: pain at the continued absence of letters gives way to shared work, family calm, and renewed happiness in Richard’s spoken assurance of love.

Content

Friday, January 15:

Little sleep during the night; long hours of quiet wakefulness in the dark. Thoughts of the children: are they missing me? Few worries, perhaps all too few, about Hans; his artistic activities are a source of pleasure to him, my sorrowful detachment from it after the failure of our great undertaking interrupted the flow of this source. How different is R., how utterly he has only me to understand him and to share his isolation from the world! I cannot believe that I shall have to pay for my dedication to him through the alienation of my elder children.

Richard is not looking well: is it his inner anxiety or the overcast weather which weighs so heavily on him? The world around us remains silent. He asks me whether I am worrying about the children, and he believes that my father has been a bad influence in that matter. Unfortunately I believe so, too. However, Loldi and Eva are well; the latter very wild.

Today R. woke me up with “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott.” Then he declared there would certainly be a war this year. How long will we be granted our Tribschen tranquillity?

Read some of Schiller’s letters while the children are out walking. Fall asleep from weariness. R. is working on his score. Loldi very good, Eva so violent that she hits me.

Solitary walk after lunch; the play of sun and mist gives the farther banks of the lake the appearance of a dream vision, the trees, covered with frost, greet me like gentle, friendly ghosts; Mount Pilatus, its peak surrounded by golden clouds, seems like the noble monarch of this dream world. “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis” [“All transient things are but an image”], I find myself thinking as I reach the top of the hill and look around me. No happiness on earth, but in our hearts Eternity, that which echoes inside us with every noble sound, every profound poem, every picture in art or Nature, every great deed of the heart.

R. again brought me no letter; real pain. I know that I could pass on to my children teachings of imperishable, everlasting worth. Is this to be denied me? When will the change in my destiny come, so that I may live for my children and for him?

Loldchen and Evchen in good health and well behaved. In the evening, dictation: the return to Zurich and the busy year 1856. R. told me during the evening that he loved me above all else in the world, and these words made me immeasurably happy, even if I know it already within my heart without his having to tell me.