Cosima's Diaries

Recordings by Cosima Wagner between 1869 and 1883

Cosima Wagner’s diaries are one of the most extraordinary inner records of nineteenth-century artistic life: part household chronicle, part spiritual notebook, part Bayreuth archive, and part psychological portrait of Wagner’s final years. Across thousands of entries, we see the daily world behind the myth: children, servants, illness, money, visitors, letters, rehearsals, readings, quarrels, weather, politics, music, and moments of almost mystical illumination. The diaries follow Wagner from the intimate Tribschen years through the creation of Bayreuth, the triumph and crisis of the 1876 Ring Festival, the making of Parsifal, the rise and collapse of the Nietzsche relationship, and the darker ideological currents that increasingly gathered around Wahnfried, including Wagner and Cosima’s antisemitism. They are not a neutral record, nor always a comfortable one, but they are indispensable: a vast, intimate, often beautiful, often disturbing window into the household where Wagner’s final works, his self-mythology, and the Bayreuth idea took shape.

The diary entries gathered here cover the years from January 1869 to February 1883, carrying the reader from the last Tribschen years to Wagner’s final days in Venice. Their breadth is astonishing. They are at once a household record, an artistic logbook, a spiritual notebook, a political barometer, and the intimate chronicle of a private circle attempting to become a public institution. Cosima records children’s illnesses, lessons, servants, meals, letters, debts, travel, weather, music-making, rehearsals, guests, books, dreams, religious reflections, and Wagner’s daily moods. The sublime and the administrative are never far apart. A passage on Schopenhauer, Shakespeare, Calderón, Beethoven, or Christ may sit beside anxieties about singers, money, doctors, railway journeys, or household arrangements.

The early years, especially 1869 to 1871, still belong largely to the private world of Tribschen. They are filled with the pressures surrounding Cosima’s separation from Hans von Bülow, her union with Richard Wagner, the birth and childhood of Siegfried, and the intense domestic enclosure in which Wagner’s later work was nurtured. Yet the outside world continually enters: King Ludwig, Munich theatrical politics, the Franco-Prussian War, German nationalism, and the first sustained appearances of Friedrich Nietzsche. Wagner’s work on Siegfried and the wider Ring is recorded not as a distant masterpiece but as something happening in rooms, at the piano, amid children, letters, exhaustion, and sudden exaltation.

From 1871 onward, the diaries begin to turn toward Bayreuth. At first it appears as an idea, almost a visionary solution to the failures of ordinary theatres. Soon it becomes practical reality: sites, architects, patrons, Wagner societies, subscriptions, guarantees, construction, copyists, singers, scenery, and the immense labour of creating a theatre for one artistic purpose. The move to Bayreuth and the building of Wahnfried do not simplify life. They intensify it. The diaries show Bayreuth not merely as a shrine, but as a project beset by money, politics, vanity, devotion, incompetence, faith, and fatigue.

The approach to the 1876 Ring cycle dominates the middle years. The Festival is presented as the culmination of decades of artistic striving, but Cosima’s record makes clear how fragile the whole enterprise was. Every singer, rehearsal, costume, curtain, orchestral problem, and financial arrangement seems capable of threatening the ideal. After the Festival, the tone shifts sharply. The achievement has happened, but its aftermath is troubled by deficit, press hostility, uncertainty about future performances, the proposed Society of Patrons, the founding of the Bayreuther Blätter, and the London concerts undertaken to repair the damage. Bayreuth has succeeded as revelation, but it has also become a burden that must somehow survive in the world.

After 1876, Parsifal gradually becomes the spiritual centre of the diaries. The entries from 1877 to 1882 increasingly revolve around its poem, score, staging, rehearsals, religious atmosphere, and practical realization. The world of the Grail enters the daily life of Wahnfried: Gurnemanz, Kundry, Amfortas, Klingsor, the Flower Maidens, the Temple, the Communion imagery, the question of sacred drama, and the problem of presenting a work that seems to demand reverence from a public theatre. At the same time, Wagner’s health, his travels, his growing weariness, and the family’s movements through Italy and Venice give the later diaries a more autumnal character.

The diaries must also be read with full awareness of their antisemitism. This is not a marginal feature. In the early years, anti-Jewish remarks often cluster around the controversy of Wagner’s Judaism in Music, hostile critics, the press, Meyerbeer, musicians, theatre politics, and questions of assimilation. By the later 1870s and early 1880s, the tone changes. Antisemitism becomes more sweeping, more political, and more programmatic. The entries increasingly connect Jews with finance, journalism, liberalism, modernity, social decay, and Germany’s loss of spiritual identity. The diaries also record Wagner and Cosima reading or discussing figures such as Disraeli, Stoecker, Gobineau, and writings on the so-called Jewish question. By 1881, this hostility has hardened into open sympathy for anti-Jewish agitation and fantasies of expulsion, separation, or emigration. The development is ugly, historically important, and inseparable from the world these diaries disclose.

That ugliness is made more complex, not less, by the fact that Jewish individuals remain present in Wagner’s life and work: friends, patrons, musicians, correspondents, and, most famously in the late Bayreuth circle, Hermann Levi. The diaries therefore reveal not a simple contradiction but a deeper moral failure: Wagner and Cosima could depend on, admire, or work intimately with individual Jews while still interpreting Jewishness itself through hostile and dehumanizing abstractions. Any serious encounter with these diaries must resist both sanitizing this material and reducing the whole archive to it.

The Nietzsche story forms another major arc. In 1869, Nietzsche enters as a brilliant young philologist and soon becomes a cherished visitor, correspondent, and intellectual ally. The early diaries record excitement over his writings, especially the work that would become central to the Wagnerian cause, The Birth of Tragedy. During the Bayreuth years he appears as part of the wider hope for a new German culture, one that might unite art, philosophy, and spiritual renewal. Yet the relationship gradually frays. His ill health, his independence, the influence of Paul Rée, his rejection of Schopenhauer, and the publication of Human, All Too Human transform him in the Wagners’ eyes from disciple into apostate. By the later entries, Nietzsche is remembered with bitterness, as a figure of disappointment, ingratitude, and betrayal.

What makes these diaries invaluable is precisely their mixture of greatness and blindness. They reveal the daily climate in which Wagner’s late works were conceived, defended, mythologized, and institutionalized. They show Bayreuth being born out of metaphysical ambition and practical desperation. They show Parsifal emerging from religious longing, theatrical calculation, bodily decline, and cultural polemic. They show friendship turning into estrangement, devotion turning into dogma, and spiritual aspiration entangled with prejudice. To read Cosima’s diaries is to enter the workshop, chapel, battlefield, and household of Wagner’s final years.

Year

Month

1869• 1870• 1871• 1872• 1873• 1874• 1875• 1876• 1877• 1878• 1879• 1880• 1881• 1882• 1883

Jan• Feb• Mar• Apr• May• Jun• Jul• Aug• Sep• Oct• Nov• Dec

Showing entries for December 1870 (31 total)

Date	Word Count	Subject	Content
December 1, 1870	95	Indisposition, worry, overcast weather, and Wagner's ill health make the day heavy. Cosima corrects Schure's Walkuere translation while the war's religious agitation in France pleases Wagner for clarifying the conflict. Late in the evening his playing of the Meistersinger Act III prelude moves Cosima to tears, while Fidi's first cut lock of hair is felt as a small loss of innocence.	Thursday, December 1: Indisposition and worry. — The church is openly inciting war in France, which pleases R., since it makes the issue increasingly clear. — Family lunch. R. unwell, the weather overcast. I correct Schuré’s translation of Die Walküre. In the evening conversation with R. — Late in the evening R. plays the Prelude to Act III of Die Meistersinger, it moves me to tears in the adjoining room. (Today cut off the first lock of Fidi’s hair, since it was falling in his eyes. R. regrets it—“as if he had lost his first innocence.”)
December 2, 1870	191	A brief clear sky revives Wagner, showing how much he depends on the blue of heaven, but his pains and weak eyes return by nightfall. Cosima is deeply alarmed by his melancholy, lack of pleasure in work, and their precarious lack of possessions or prospects. She steadies herself by comparing all hardship with the greater wrong of causing another suffering and by trusting in God's continued help.	Friday, December 2: Clear sky, R. at once better, he absolutely needs the blue of Heaven. Unfortunately it does not last long; when he comes home late in the evening, he is feeling pains in his back; he is vexed about it, he gets no pleasure from his work, the sight of the world fills him with melancholy, and also his eyes seem to be getting weaker. — This fills me with unutterable concern; once again I go to bed with Goethe’s verse in my mind: “Who never ate with tears his bread, who never through night’s heavy hours ...” I will try to retain the favor of the heavenly powers by diligently performing my task through joy and sorrow. I am sometimes alarmed to see how we hang in the air, how completely without possessions and indeed without prospects we are, yet I also keep my eyes fixed on the worst misery, I tell myself that the worst was after all causing someone else suffering, everything else can be borne; and now let it be as God wills; He will continue to help, as good King Wilhelm says in his telegram!
December 3, 1870	75	Wagner remains unwell and unable to work with any appetite, which Cosima experiences as one of her hardest trials. The children are well, she walks with them after lessons, and music with Richter provides activity amid snow. Evening reading of David Strauss's lectures brings irritation at the book's slovenly style and mannered treatment.	Saturday, December 3: R. still unwell and with no inclination to work; that is for me the hardest test, may Heaven help me to bear it! The children well, walk with them after work, then music with Richter. — (My cushion finished, started on leggings again!) In the evening continued reading David Strauss’s lectures, begun yesterday. Much dissatisfaction with the book, the style of which is as slovenly as a student’s and again very mannered. (Snow.)
December 4, 1870	393	A letter from Meysenbug and Cosima's fear that she may be pregnant enter a day already darkened by Wagner's cold, despondency, and disgust with a world that seems grotesque to him. He forces himself to work and reflects on the gulf between inspiration and notation, praising Beethoven's late quartets as supreme acts of remembering and recording improvisation. Children's play, Nietzsche's parcels, Schopenhauer's color theory, the arrival of printed Beethoven, and Cosima's own inexpressible emotional turmoil make the day dense with art, philosophy, family, and anxiety.	Sunday, December 4: Letter from M. Meysenbug, and fear that I am pregnant. R. has a cold and is despondent; a conversation which touched on the King yesterday has deeply upset him; the thought that “his work, his highest ideal, should be trampled underfoot to earn him his bread,” depresses him, just as publications like Strauss’s Voltaire annoy him, the contemporary world appears grotesque to him, and, as he confesses to me, he is now painfully aware of how much the world resembles a lunatic asylum. He forces himself to work. At lunch he exclaims: “What is the thing written down as compared with the inspiration? What is notation in comparison with imagination? The former is governed by the specific laws of convention, the latter is free, boundless. That is the tremendous thing about Beethoven, that in his last quartets he was able to remember and record improvisations, which could only be done through art of the highest, highest order. With me it is always the drama which flouts convention and opens up new possibilities.” — I think I understand him, for the relationship of the written to the improvised is the same as speech to emotions. I could never express what is stirring my emotions at the present time, I feel as if my heart had been broken into pieces, and love, like a bird used to a cage, is fluttering around, knocking against everything, wounding itself—want so much to express it now, but I just cannot! — Loldi doing a bear’s dance, Eva leaping like a poodle to Richter’s fiddling; Loldi amuses us with her affected speech, she talks as if she really spoke another language and had learned German quite separately. Prof. Nietzsche sends us Burckhardt’s book on the Renaissance and a little treatise by Prof. Czermak on Schopenhauer’s color theory; we read it during the evening, and R. is annoyed by the peculiar arrogance scientists show toward philosophers. He remarks, “Realists and idealists—they are and always will be worlds apart, but only the idealist can ignore the realist, never the other way around.” And: “The scientist says, as it were: I, the individual, am nothing, but my science is infallible, and by being a part of it I am able to look down on the greatest philosophers.” — The printed Beethoven has arrived. Sending copies off (wrote the poem to Hans).
December 5, 1870	90	A melancholy night gives Cosima several little poems, but the day is dominated by Liszt's remittance of 15,000 francs in her father's name. At Wagner's request she returns it, insisting that she wanted her Rothschild affairs put in order rather than emergency help, and the payment greatly vexes him. A former cook's touching letter, Christmas purchases, and more Strauss fill out the day.	Monday, December 5: The night puts me in a mood for verse! Four or five little poems occur to me, but they are melancholy, like my whole outlook. Uncle Liszt sends me 15,000 francs in my father’s name. At R.’s request I return them with the remark that I had asked for my affairs with Rothschild to be put in order, not for help in a time of embarrassment. The remittance vexes R. extremely. — Letter from our former cook, who is very touched. Christmas purchases. In the evening more Strauss.
December 6, 1870	136	Cosima tells Wagner she is pregnant, and he receives the news calmly and happily enough that she resolves to face difficulty and an uncertain future without fear. Herrig's strange letter about Beethoven and talk of Egmont's journey-of-life words frame the day intellectually. Evening reading of the Voltaire-Frederick correspondence leads Wagner to admire both men while warning that a king's friendships are never free from the dangers of power.	Tuesday, December 6: I tell R. of my pregnancy; he smiles and has no worries in his own behalf; I will willingly bear all the difficulties and face the problematic future without fear. R. says that in the past days he found himself thinking particularly of Egmont’s words about the journey of life, during which one had only to clear away, to resist, to pay heed. (Yesterday a letter from Dr. Herrig about Beethoven, strange and somewhat incomprehensible.) In the evening the correspondence between Voltaire and Frederick. “A king should be just a king, not do other things as well, for the danger of Spandau, etc., playing a part in friendly relationships is too great,” R. says. Much delight in both men in the letters, but particularly in the manner of the King. (Orleans has been taken.)
December 7, 1870	137	Cosima has to tell Wagner that her pregnancy fear was mistaken, and his tears reveal how gladly he had imagined a child conceived in secure happiness. Christmas shopping and Strauss reading occupy the day, while Wagner's discussion with Richter on Weber, Beethoven, repetition, and orchestral color shows his mind still working intensely. Telegrams from Leipzig reporting Die Meistersinger's success bring public encouragement.	Wednesday, December 7: I have to whisper in R.’s ear that I was wrong; this moves him to tears, for he had been pleased and had thought that Fate desired me to bring a child into the world without fear and in the full happiness of love. — To town to make Christmas purchases. Late lunch (5). In the evening more Strauss. Before that I come upon R. in conversation with Richter about Weber—how before the latter no one had any inkling of the sinister quality of certain instruments (oboe, clarinet); just as before Beethoven no one knew anything about repetition; what in Rossini is a sensual effect here becomes a form of melody; and everything combines to make it so, the instrumentation, the key, everything. — Telegrams from Leipzig about the great success of Die Meistersinger there.
December 8, 1870	234	Letters from Heigel, Herrig, Marr, and Schott surround the nearly sold-out Beethoven publication and place Wagner amid readers, admirers, and cultural grievances. Wagner studies Herrig's personality through his letter and makes broader judgments about bookishness, German operatic taste, and recurring antisemitic preoccupations. Snow, Grane's illness, a walk into town, and evening Strauss lead to reflections on Voltaire's confusion and the greater symbolic wisdom Wagner and Cosima find in Indian thought.	Thursday, December 8: Letter from Dr. Heigel, who sends me his poem “Die Majorin.” Report from the publisher that Beethoven is practically sold out. Another letter from Dr. Herrig about Beethoven. R. reads it slowly, he says he always seeks to immerse himself in such a personality. One can see, he adds, that Dr. H. has always gathered his impressions from books, never directly. Concern about the Jews seems unbounded, R. says. A letter from Herr W. Marr claiming that Opera and Drama has taken complete possession of him, is evidence of the same concern. Nice letter from the publisher Schott, saying that at the beginning of the war he had the impression that people were trying to liberate themselves from Verdi and Offenbach; the German nation, however, did not possess that amount of strength. Family lunch. Snow flurries, Grane ill, R. and I walk into town. In the evening more Strauss; the analysis of Voltaire’s philosophical writings makes us remark how sad it is to see such a mind as V.’s involving itself in such torments of inextricable confusion by always seeking in outward things the explanation which can never come from outside. The Indians, says R., understood that; their Brahma myth is a symbolic interpretation of the world; by exaggerating the space relationships, for example, they produce the concept of spacelessness. How this wisdom continues increasingly to astonish me—beside it we look like barbarians!
December 9, 1870	570	Talk of a free German church, the defeated Loire army, Trochu's refusal to surrender, and Bismarck's appeal to Rome gives Wagner occasion for a sweeping contrast between Latin republican illusion and German duty. Fidi's clear word 'Hermine' offers a domestic brightness amid political and philosophical argument. The day ends in Wagner's reflections on world suffering, kingship, his own relation to the Bavarian king, the bound copy of My Life, and sobering financial concerns that leave Cosima resolving to economize and trust God.	Friday, December 9: There is talk of a religious movement in Germany; a free German church—that would be good. — The Loire army has now been defeated, but Trochu refuses to surrender, and Gambetta goes on lying about victories and triumphs. — Fidi says distinctly: Hermine. — Gambetta and Bismarck are now wooing the Holy Father; Bismarck requests an order from Rome that the Catholic population of the conquered provinces submit to the force of arms (as happened once in Poland). Europe is now busy admiring France again! And R. says: “Two opposing principles are clearly involved here; the Latin peoples, blinded by the French Revolution, have revived memories of the ancient world and expect from the republic bliss on earth; with the republic all evils are expected to disappear, including their own exertion and self-sacrifice. The individual German, on the other hand, suffers from no illusions; being wiser, he recognizes instinctively that no shibboleth can bring the world’s salvation. In the Prussian officer’s ‘What my king commands, I obey,’ which must certainly seem terribly stupid and narrow-minded to the French, there lies a deep meaning and a deep realization that there are certain matters one cannot discuss with semi-morons. I have lived through all these illusions myself and have now got to the point of understanding the meaning of a limited sense of duty.” In the evening, after playing a few bars, he exclaims: “Oh, all this world suffering, this childishly wailing nursery song of old men! I have given it expression in the thirds of the Norns, I feel as if I have heard it: now it is spring, now winter, now war, now peace, it is all the same.” We again read Strauss’s Voltaire. Remarking disapprovingly about Frederick the Great, R. says: “A king must be strong in endurance, he must reveal his heart by remaining untouched by many things. If in the Jewish affair he had banished Voltaire, that would have been in order, but he preferred to tolerate a humbled, rather than an independent friend. That is the way of kings, and it is brought about by their special position. I know beyond a doubt that, when at the end of Die Meistersinger the King summoned me to his box, he did it only in order to show those people who thought they had an influence over him that this was not so; the means he usually employed against me, he was in this instance employing against the others.” My Life has now been bound; I beg R. not to make a present of it to the King, so that Fidi will not be deprived, on account of some possible indiscretion, of his only capital (publication after our death). — The demand from the steamship company—about 500 francs—brings us to a dismal theme; R. thinks I have a lot in the savings bank, and I have to explain to him that I have only 2,000 francs (the quartet and the hanging lamp used up the rest). This causes slight concern and arouses despondent thoughts of the children’s future. I promise—as I had already decided in any case—to give no more presents, to spend nothing, and to put my allowance aside regularly. But shall I be receiving this? The state of affairs does not inspire confidence. But in God’s name, I have certainly been given more happiness than I am worthy of, and I put my trust in God!
December 10, 1870	136	Fidi's choice of Plato from Wagner's library offers a comic domestic omen before letters, lessons, and Christmas shopping take over the day. Wagner tenderly meets Cosima in the dark so she will not return home on foot while Grane is ill. His later rage over his work and its earlier mishandling becomes Cosima's greatest trial because she cannot help him, and news of Heinz von Buelow's death adds personal grief.	Saturday, December 10: Fidi seeks out Plato for himself from his father’s library! Letter from Herr Wesendonck, to whom R. had sent his Beethoven. Work with the children and then Christmas shopping. R. comes to meet me in the darkness; he does not wish to let me return home on foot, has followed me, and ordered a carriage (Grane is ill)! In the evening he falls into a gloomy rage about his work and the deplorable things that have happened to the first parts of it. This is for me the great test, the greatest of all, because here I cannot help him! I go sadly to bed. (Letter from Grandmama in London, reporting the death of Hans’s stepbrother Heinz von Bülow, who died at Châteauneuf; I weep a lot, for of course I knew the young man.)
December 11, 1870	156	Cosima feels crushed by the continuing war and by the accumulated suffering beyond ordinary private pain. Christmas errands and correspondence continue, while Wagner cannot produce requested additions to Beethoven on command and must refuse Fritzsch. Finishing Strauss's Voltaire leads Wagner to see Voltaire as the final flowering of the French spirit, brilliant but lacking a deeper source.	Sunday, December 11: Incalculable the duration of the war—who can love life when he experiences such horrors? Oh, God, individual suffering is unbearable enough, and now these mountains of sufferings! (Letters to Schuré and to Malwida, forwarding the cup with Loulou’s picture for Hans.) Christmas matters. Herr Fritzsch cables for the additions R. had promised for Beethoven, but it is impossible for R. to work to order; he writes to the publisher that he has none to send. En route he was constantly asking himself what he was still supposed to say—though previously he had been full of the additions he wanted to make. In the evening finished Voltaire. “The deep source was missing, but it is the final flowering of the French spirit, as far as this can be taken; anything more—as attempted by J. J. Rousseau—just sounds false in them.” R. astonished by the rough and crude diction of the conversation (Boulainvilliers). (Letter from Karl Klindworth.)
December 12, 1870	224	Cosima works all day on a muff for Loldi while Wagner works and urges her to write Countess Bismarck about the need for a German emperor for the art of the future. Loulou dictates family letters in the evening, keeping grief and duty within the household. Wagner's longing to study Indian thought leads to reflections on allegory, caste, convention, Tasso, his own poetry, music, and the clarity of Wotan's guilt in Das Rheingold.	Monday, December 12: Worked all day on a muff for Loldi. R. works, too; he says I should write to Countess Bismarck that a German emperor is predestined—he needs an emperor for the art of the future. I will do as he asks. In the evening Loulou dictates to me her letters to her grandmama and to Heinz’s mother. In the morning R. says to me: “How I long to start studying the Indians! All of it is unqualified truth; their allegories express what cannot otherwise be expressed. With us everything is established in a sort of convention; for example, Goethe’s Tasso is based on the tragedy of royal birth, which calls for unmixed blood, and that accounts for the Princess’s noble renunciation; but along comes the great realist and says: ‘What does it matter, you princes? You are human beings like ourselves.’ With the Indians, on the other hand, even their caste doctrine is based on a profound knowledge of Nature.” I mention R.’s poems as being of a kind which also frees us from convention. “That is the music,” he says. I dispute this and maintain that even without music his poetry is unique. “Das Rheingold,” he says, “has this one advantage—that as in a peasant’s trial it does clearly show us Wotan’s guilt and fatal error and the urgent need for his renunciation.”
December 13, 1870	211	An appreciative Beethoven article reaches the house, but Wagner prefers not to hear praise, content only not to be treated as a charlatan. He sends an autograph for wounded soldiers' associations with a pointed Lohengrin quotation turned against the West, while fatigue and anxiety over his work return by evening. Cosima imagines a devotional photograph of herself kneeling before him, worries about Fidi after a fall, and finds Calderon's Los dos amantes del cielo troublingly cold and shallow.	Tuesday, December 13: Richter sends Loldi to me with a very appreciative article about Beethoven, but R. does not want it read aloud; he says, “I am content to know that I have not been trampled into the dust and that I am not being talked about as if I were a charlatan; but to hear my praises sung is horrible to me.” He sends off, as requested, an autograph for associations for the wounded. He had been asked for Meistersinger songs; he writes a quotation from Lohengrin, “Ne’er shall the foe venture from his barren East,” but alters this into “windy West”! and then adds, “As a change from Die Wacht am Rhein.” In the evening R. is very worn out; he complains that thinking about his work robs him of so much time. I told him today that we should have ourselves photographed, I kneeling before him, for this is my rightful position—it would be a family heirloom. He says that since having my portrait he wants no other possessions. (Letter to Lenbach.) In the evening Calderon’s Los dos amantes del cielo; a little perturbed about the baldachins, the emeralds, etc. (Fidi very restless; I am anxious about him, since he fell off a chair yesterday.) Loulou writes to her grandmother.
December 14, 1870	314	Discussion of a spring Berlin journey confirms for Wagner that Cosima must come, because only with her does he feel whole. He works while the children and Cosima sew, then plays parts of Bruennhilde's awakening, moving Cosima with its vision of love's birth and transformation. Letters from Clemens Brockhaus and family news encourage her, while the evening's Calderon ending disappoints them with its coldness despite Wagner's renewed confidence in his own powers.	Wednesday, December 14: R. discusses with me the journey to Berlin next spring; I ask him whether I have to go, and he replies: “Definitely. Only with you am I something; together we form a whole; by myself I am no longer anything.” So be it, then! We decide to avoid hotel life and to stay with a family if possible. R. works; the children and I devote our day to needlework. Shortly after lunch R. plays some passages from the scene of Brünnhilde’s awakening, which moves me unutterably—this genesis of love in a youth who does not even know what a woman is and who then enchants and rejuvenates this woman, who has already spun at the web of life and is his superior—this seems to me quite unique. And then the music! “Yes, I can still do it,” R. says, laughing. “It is not so long since I did that, and afterward I even managed the horrible story” (the first act of Götterdämmerung). Very nice and intelligent letter from Clemens Brockhaus about Die Meistersinger in Leipzig and Beethoven. Doris is engaged again, which her mother is reluctant to announce. The cordial, familiar tone of R.’s nephew pleases me very much; I think of Fidi—that he might perhaps find a friendly relationship there. I am also touched by the decidedly friendly attitude toward me. “Oh, they know what is what,” R. says. “Anybody who gets to know you can be in no doubt at all about you. It was ordained in the stars that you should dedicate yourself to me.” Laughing, he adds, as he looks at my picture: “Oh, yes, the proud little lady was quite determined. I’ll show you, she is thinking.” Ate late in the evening, since R. was working. Finished Calderon’s Los dos amantes del cielo; astounded by the coldness of the play and the flatness and shallowness of some of the scenes.
December 15, 1870	185	Mild weather, a dream of Voltaire and Wagner arguing over Duerer, and renewed judgments about Calderon open the day. Christmas preparations, letters from Cosima's mother and Schure, and Wagner's new ending for Beethoven lead into an evening beginning Gibbon. Wagner dreams of wealth, an Italian villa, and peaceful study, but also says that what he lacks in reading is replaced by living with Cosima and the children.	Thursday, December 15: R. tells me in the morning that I am looking transfigured today—maybe the arrival of this mild, thawing weather, which always relaxes me, is to blame. I dreamed that at table Voltaire and R. got into a quarrel about Albrecht Dürer. Coming back once more to Calderon, R. says he is at his best in his comedies; the tragedies captivate through the themes they deal with. Christmas preparations. Family lunch. Letter from my mother with the familiar injustices toward Prussia. I go into town with R.; there we find a letter from Schuré, who writes very understandingly about Beethoven, but in French, so R. does not even read it. R. is writing another ending for his Beethoven. “One must not always butter the Germans up,” he says. In the evening began Gibbon. R. says he would like to be rich, move into an Italian villa with me, and there study in peace and at leisure. “I never read anything at all now, but to make up for it I live, I have you and the children.” Loulou writes to Luise Bülow, I to Hedwig.
December 16, 1870	212	Bad news from France overwhelms Cosima with fear that the war may not end as it should, while the Schures' plans to go to Lyon bring the conflict even closer. Nietzsche reports a foolish question about Beethoven, and Richter plays his music for Die Kapitulation with embarrassment over attaching his name to it. Wagner admits the farce cost him effort but sees its completion as a guard against the habit of abandoning ideas too easily.	Friday, December 16: We are depressed about the news from France. Paris is reported to have laid in provisions during the recent fighting, and they claim to have 400,000 men mobilized. One cannot predict how long this slaughter will still go on, and I am beset by worry whether it will turn out as it should, in our favor. What still lies ahead? How will it end? I cannot apply myself to anything today; fear robs me of my breath. Letter from the Schurés, who are going to Lyon, she to tend the wounded, he probably to fight. Letter from Prof. Nietzsche: a Basel professor asked him whether Wagner’s Beethoven was written against Beethoven! In the evening Richter plays us his music for Die Kapitulation and admits to us that he would find it embarrassing to put his name to it; he declares that the reason Betz does not reply to him is undoubtedly that he thinks Richter needs money and has therefore started to compose! We laugh, and R. says how heavily one has to pay for such ideas; it had cost him a lot, too, to write the thing; but he had done it in order not to get into the habit of giving things up too easily. (Letter to my mother.)
December 17, 1870	225	Beethoven Day arrives without the Zurich symphonic celebration Wagner had wished to give Cosima, and war news casts mourning over the occasion. Betz returns Die Kapitulation because of production costs, which Wagner accepts as fate now that the Paris situation has changed. Fidi's crying, a poor bookseller's delivery, a bookbinder's assistant's thoughtful praise of Beethoven, work on Siegfried, and Gibbon fill a day of thwarted public gestures and inward retreat.	Saturday, December 17: Beethoven Day! How to celebrate this unique occasion? R. admits that in order to give me pleasure he would have liked to conduct a symphony in Zurich today; we discuss how to make up for this. The news from France fills us with mourning; it is being said quite definitely that even the fall of Paris will not mean the end of the war. Betz returns Die Kapitulation; the theaters are frightened of the production costs. R. is basically glad, for the situation in Paris has changed, the mood is no longer the same; it is a decree of Fate. “To stretch out a hand to the outside world is a dead loss; to withdraw it and fold one’s arms is wisdom and peace.” Fidi is Tribschen’s Gambetta—howling! (says R.). He sees a creature like Gambetta as “in a fever of agitation, with a rose in his buttonhole.” Unpleasant experience with a dealer in art books from Berlin who has sent me disgraceful Christmas wrappers. The bookbinder’s assistant tells R. that he has read Beethoven and finds it very good, whereupon R.: “It is not very easy to read.” “No, one has to give it some thought, but all the same I read it and find it very good.” R. works on Siegfried. (Letter to Dr. Heigel.) In the evening read Gibbon. (R. not well.)
December 18, 1870	438	A discussion of Laube leads Wagner to reflect on people whose promising phase passes away, and he expands the thought into a theory that each person contains all possibilities. This lets him explain why even philistines can respond to Tristan, having known at least one hour of resisted love. War mismanagement and concern for the troops dominate Cosima despite Wagner's disapproval, but his later pursuit of her through fields shows the force of his attachment before evening Gibbon.	Sunday, December 18: A discussion of Laube’s behavior produces from R. the remark: “I find it so sad when people who have played a pleasant role in my life suddenly behave so badly—not only toward me, but altogether. Like young girls, a great many men have their beauté de diable, a time when they look promising, and later one is quite surprised to find there was nothing in them.” I said it seemed to me that every person, man or woman, had a phase in life in which he was better than during the rest of it. R. replies: “Because in every individual all potentialities are contained, just as the whole universe is contained in cellular tissue. This is also why an artist can count on making an overall impression; I dare to maintain that even the most extreme of philistines can feel with Tristan and Isolde, for there has certainly been one hour in his life when he fought shy of falling in love.” Yesterday, in connection with the division of the Roman Empire into Latin and Greek provinces, R. says, “You can see at once how certain peoples, such as the Greeks, are unable to give up their language and their culture; the ancient Germans could not do it, either, while others, including the Gauls, became Latinized.” The way in which the war is being conducted is being bitterly condemned; it is said Moltke has ordered that Paris be merely surrounded, and that the pursuit of the Loire army was very halfhearted, the deployment of troops too scattered, leading to terrible losses. These things unfortunately dominate my thoughts entirely, and R. notes it with disapproval. I ought certainly to have concealed my agitation. At lunch R. asks Hermine whether she has been to church like a good girl—he himself went there only every 30 years in order to get married! “What a fleeting, meaningless thing life is!” he exclaims after humming to himself the “Song of May 3.” “When I think of these Poles—where have all those happy faces gone, the half-chivalrous, half-pedantic mood of that public holiday I told you about? The same people would have no idea what they looked like: it was all caused by the emergence of the idea of Poland.” I go to Countess B.’s. R., who had wanted to go for a walk with me (which I had not understood), hurries after me through meadows and marshes, and to my great astonishment I see him near the railroad striding along ahead of me on the other side with Rus. “You just don’t realize how attached I am to you,” he says. In the evening Gibbon.
December 19, 1870	194	Lusch's dream of Hans trapped between Wagner and Richter pierces Cosima, while an admiring Schopenhauerian letter reaches Wagner from Pest. Christmas duties occupy her, but military rumors and fears about the troops keep intruding, and Wagner jokes that he would write a German constitution to please her. Hair-plaiting prompts his contrast between the adorned self-sacrifice of Spartan battle and the other spiritual world of Saint Francis, after which Gibbon continues.	Monday, December 19: Lusch touches my heart by telling me she has dreamed of her father; he had been in a corner between R. and Richter and had been unable to get away. Letter to R. from an admirer of Schopenhauer in Pest, full of enthusiasm and veneration. R. works; I fully occupied with Christmas matters. The situation of our troops alarms me; a great mistake seems to have been made. R. says he would like to write a constitution for the German people—“to please you,” he says jokingly. In the evening Gibbon. (2nd edition of Beethoven?) Countess B. comes and says a rumor is going around that Trochu has broken through. Today, as I am plaiting my hair in various ways and I tell R. I enjoy doing it, he replies: “When I first read about the Spartans, who plaited their hair before going thus adorned into battle, I got my first impression of life as a lovely game, in which people sacrifice themselves gladly and seek to approach the gods adorned in a worthy manner. That is the one world, and the world of Saint Francis of Assisi is the other.” Continued with Gibbon.
December 20, 1870	83	Wagner's bad night and swollen veins leave Cosima deeply worried despite his affectionate name for her as his good muse. Richter is in Zurich, and Cosima hears in town of a favorable Beethoven article while Fritzsch unexpectedly sends Wagner more money for the work. The evening returns to Gibbon after a day shaped by illness, literary reception, and financial surprise.	Tuesday, December 20: R. is not well. The foehn does not agree with him. His veins are swollen, and he had a bad night. His good muse, he calls me, but all his love cannot dispel my concern about his indisposition. R[ichter] is in Zurich. I to town, where Count B. tells me there is a nice article about Beethoven in the Nationalzeitung. At the same time Herr Fritzsch sends R. more money for this work, which surprises R. exceedingly. In the evening Gibbon.
December 21, 1870	325	Bucher's photograph arrives from headquarters, but there is still no encouraging news about Paris and Wagner has had another bad night. Recalling Cosima's 1869 birthday surprise leads him to reflect that concealment is nearly unbearable in a love like theirs. Talk of medical travel, Strasbourg's destroyed treasures, and art as a brief blue flame over destruction turns the day toward the dream of art illuminating an age rich in deeds.	Wednesday, December 21: From General Headquarters Councilor Bucher sends his photograph. Still nothing encouraging concerning Paris, the French efforts have undoubtedly been underestimated by our people. R. has had another bad night. While we are drinking coffee in the downstairs salon, he looks up at the gallery and says he can recall the surprise he felt on his birthday in ’69, when he listened there to the quartet and saw for the first time the painted windowpane. “You must prepare no more such surprises,” he said, “for I can imagine how difficult it was for you all the time you were preparing it. In a love like ours it is surely almost unbearable having to conceal things from each other.” I admit to him that when he questioned me about my correspondence with Herr Müller over the quartet and always accepted my answers without question, I did feel deeply ashamed. I advise him to consult a doctor in Basel or Zurich about his indisposition. “Best of all I should have liked to go to Strassburg, since I hardly know it, so as to see something else at the same time. Were there any good pictures there?” I mention some which were destroyed with the library. “Yes, one has to make up one’s mind whether all the treasures should be consigned to destruction without scruple, or whether one will put up with even the worst of conditions just in order to preserve them all.” “And then they really will be destroyed,” I said. “Yes, as the barbarians did with the Roman Empire. And what is art, after all? It is like the lovely blue flames which now and again flicker over a fire, while everything going on beneath them is destruction, annihilation. But that art should provide a light during a period rich in deeds—that indeed is the dream.” I reply to my friend in Versailles, write to Countess B. enclosing the Christmas gifts. In the evening read Gibbon.
December 22, 1870	437	Reports that Paris may have provisions until April and may evade bombardment bring discouraging news, which Wagner answers by invoking German patience and perseverance. Letters from Cornelius and Heigel, including a request for material on Wagner's mother, raise Cosima's resistance to journalism that exploits private life. Richter's violinist, thoughts of leaving Tribschen, Wagner's pattern of flight and renewal, and memories of Tannhaeuser and French cities fill a long reflective day.	Thursday, December 22: It is now being said that Paris has enough provisions to last until April, and there is hardly any likelihood of a bombardment, since the range of the guns is too short. This is certainly bad news. R. says, “Now the Germans can show what they are made of; they have always distinguished themselves through patience and perseverance.” Letter in Latin from Peter Cornelius, announcing the birth of his third child. Letter to me from Dr. Heigel, who has been asked to make a contribution to a book about the mothers of famous men and has chosen R.’s mother. I find journalism of this sort, which exploits everything, however private and intimate, quite horrifying; I shall tell Dr. H. that I am not willing to supply the required information. Richter brings along a violinist from Zurich, with whom our house quartets are to be arranged. Yesterday R. spoke of our leaving Tribschen and then added, “Throughout my life there have been periods in which I was as good as dead and in which I sowed the seeds of a new life—thus Paris (after my jobs as music director), which led to my conducting engagement in Dresden, then Zurich following Dresden, and now Tribschen.” I mention the remark that flight has always been a distinctive feature of his life; flight from Riga, flight from Dresden, flight from Zurich, flight from Munich (twice). It is to be hoped this is now at an end. When I tell him of my delight in the Venus scene in Tannhäuser (added in Paris), he says: “How conscious I was in Dresden of the inadequacy of this scene, how modestly did I doubt my ability to become one of the great—someone capable of doing what he wanted! I was just glad that I could put my whole soul into whatever I did do. But the reappearance of Venus I added afterward, and from it I later developed the whole Paris scene.” Our conversation brings us to the large cities of France. “How dreary they are! Bordeaux, for example, is quite terrible, in spite of its magnificence; yet there I got to know a rector of the consistory; he gave a lecture on the Germanic character and maintained that the Saxon opposition to Charlemagne—that is to say, the Germanic versus the Latin—could be traced right up to Luther. I was absolutely Red in those days and I had a lively argument with this intelligent man, while Mme Laussot (who was not a bluestocking then!) listened in bliss.” R.’s autograph is discussed in the A.A. Zeitung, it is expected to be auctioned for a very high sum.
December 23, 1870	35	The day is given almost entirely to Christmas preparations. Cosima drives to town in a sleigh and returns half frozen, then decorates the tree in the evening. The children work secretly, and excitement spreads through the house.	Friday, December 23: Nothing to report except Christmas preparations. I drive to town in a sleigh and return home half frozen. In the evening I decorate the tree. The children work in secret. Great excitement everywhere.
December 24, 1870	115	Cosima lays out Christmas presents under the shadow of reports about starving German prisoners and thoughts of Hans. Wagner returns from town with Nietzsche, the candles are lit, and Sulzer telegraphs that he will arrive the next day. Despite the absence of exchanged gifts between Cosima and Wagner, the household, the Stockers, and especially the children are happy and content.	Saturday, December 24: My day is devoted to laying out the presents, which I do with melancholy; the report concerning our people taken prisoner in Pau, and starving, dominates my feelings, and I also think of Hans. At 5 o’clock R. returns from town, bringing Prof. Nietzsche with him, at 7 o’clock we light the candles. It is the first Christmas on which I am giving R. no present and will receive none from him—so that is all right. A telegram from Dr. Sulzer says he is accepting R.’s invitation and will arrive at midday tomorrow from Bern. Everybody is happy and content, our good Stockers think we have done too much for them. The children blissful!
December 25, 1870	290	Christmas morning becomes overwhelming when Cosima wakes to music on the stairs and receives Wagner's score of the Symphonic Birthday Greeting, the Tribschen Idyll. The work is played again after Sulzer's arrival, alongside the Lohengrin wedding procession and Beethoven's Septet, revealing the secret labor behind Richter's trumpet and Wagner's preparations. In the evening Wagner reads Meistersinger to Sulzer, but the reading becomes, for him, an intimate dialogue with Cosima.	Sunday, December 25: About this day, my children, I can tell you nothing—nothing about my feelings, nothing about my mood, nothing, nothing. I shall just tell you, drily and plainly, what happened. When I woke up I heard a sound, it grew ever louder, I could no longer imagine myself in a dream, music was sounding, and what music! After it had died away, R. came in to me with the five children and put into my hands the score of his “Symphonic Birthday Greeting.” I was in tears, but so, too, was the whole household; R. had set up his orchestra on the stairs and thus consecrated our Tribschen forever! The Tribschen Idyll—thus the work is called. At midday Dr. Sulzer arrived, surely the most important of R.’s friends! After breakfast the orchestra again assembled, and now once again the Idyll was heard in the lower apartment, moving us all profoundly (Countess B. was also there, on my invitation); after it the Lohengrin wedding procession, Beethoven’s Septet, and, to end with, once more the work of which I shall never hear enough! Now at last I understood all R.’s working in secret, also dear Richter’s trumpet (he blazed out the Siegfried theme splendidly and had learned the trumpet especially to do it), which had won him many admonishments from me. “Now let me die,” I exclaimed to R. “It would be easier to die for me than to live for me,” he replied. In the evening R. reads his Meistersinger to Dr. Sulzer, who did not know it; and I take as much delight in it as if it were something completely new. This makes R. say, “I wanted to read Sulzer Die Meistersinger, and it turned into a dialogue between us two.”
December 26, 1870	290	The day after the Idyll, Cosima moves as if in a dream, inwardly hearing the vanished music and seeking emotional redemption through it. Family letters concerning Hans and the children mingle with Nietzsche's birthday manuscript, whose concentrated account of tragedy excites Wagner and Cosima through its extension of his ideas. Serov's report from the Vienna Beethoven festivities disgusts them, while political hopes for an imperial proclamation and concerns over Alsace remain in the background.	Monday, December 26: Aunt “Isa” sends the children some little things and exhorts them to think of their father! If the dear lady only knew how such thoughts are being kept alive in the children, she would leave the subject alone. At the same time Frl. v. M[eysenbug] reports that the cup and the poem have arrived and are being passed on to Hans. The whole day long I go about as if in a dream, my spirit listens for the vanished sounds and brings them back to birth for itself, my heart, oppressed by its emotions, seeks redemption in music; a twilight dream emerges—seeing nothing more, hearing everything in the depths of silence, love ruling supreme, boundaries melting away, an unawareness of existence—“the height of bliss.” In the evening R. reads aloud passages from the manuscript Prof. Nietzsche gave me as a birthday gift; it is entitled The Birth of the Tragic Concept and is of the greatest value; the depth and excellence of his survey, conveyed with a very concentrated brevity, is quite remarkable; we follow his thoughts with the greatest and liveliest interest. My greatest pleasure is in seeing how R.’s ideas can be extended in this field. Christmas Eve brought us a letter from Alex. Serov, who made an official journey from St. Petersburg to Vienna for the Beethoven festivities. His highly original description of this shows that it was Judea which celebrated the greatest of our heroes. All of it must have been absurd and ridiculous and, for us, an affront. We would much welcome the proclamation of the emperor as a fitting celebration for Beethoven, but Herr v. Mühler’s solution for Alsace does not give much cause for joy! (Hermann Brockhaus invites us to his daughter’s wedding.)
December 27, 1870	149	Cosima plays with the children while Fidi remains overexcited from Christmas and the Idyll, having delighted the musicians with his response to the music. Meysenbug's report that Hans seems to ignore her pains Cosima, but she accepts it as something to be borne. A sleigh outing, the start of Hoffmann's Der goldene Topf, concern over no Christmas word from the King, and Wagner's wish that nothing change complete the day.	Tuesday, December 27: Played with the children in the morning. (Fidi overexcited by the music and other Christmas pleasures—could not sleep all night and kept on laughing and being skittish. During the Idyll he pleased and captivated all the musicians with his lively and spirited enjoyment of the music.) Letter from Frl. v. Meysenbug; she maintains that Hans appears to be ignoring her entirely, which pained me, but it must all be borne. In the evening fetched the children from Countess Bassenheim’s in a sleigh. In the evening we start on Hoffmann’s Der goldene Topf, which we enjoy greatly. R., embracing me as we part, says, “I want no change, I want only that it remain like this forever.” We are concerned to have had no news from the King at Christmas; R. fears that he is angry about not having been sent Siegfried. (Things for the children from their grandmama.)
December 28, 1870	200	A letter from Cosima's mother repeats accusations about German conduct in the war, while Wagner laboriously writes formal thanks to the King. News of a northern Prussian victory is tempered by the seriousness of the overall position. Richter plays Tristan for Cosima and Nietzsche, and the evening's Hoffmann reading leads Wagner to contrast the spectral real world with fantasy as true home, comparing Hoffmann's outlook with Cervantes.	Wednesday, December 28: From my mother; still the same unwitting lies about the Germans’ execrable conduct of the war! Morning games with the children; R. with an effort writes his formal letter of gratitude to the King. News of a Prussian victory in the North, but our position is very serious. In the afternoon music from Tristan, played by Richter for me and Prof. Nietzsche. In the evening we finish H.’s Der goldene Topf, for which I place Hoffmann distinctly above Edgar [Allan] Poe, although the latter has more art, because H. is a poet. R. explains the profundity of his idea of looking upon the real world as a specter, while the world of fantasy is his true home. “Of course he does not succeed in making the latter plausible, because that is impossible. Cervantes set it to one side and in Don Quixote showed us only the negative aspect; for that reason his work is more perfect, but in outlook Hoffmann is related to him.” (Yesterday visit from our good student, Schobinger, who comes from Basel and assures me he finds more pleasure in seeing me again than any of his relations. Prof. N. helped him to get his scholarship.)
December 29, 1870	132	Cosima writes to her mother and is again drawn into mourning over current events, while Loulou writes to Hans and Wagner finishes his letter to the King. Richter plays the first act of Tristan during Wagner's walk, and Wagner later reads the text aloud despite Fidi waking and the household shifting rooms to continue. The reading makes a tremendous impression on Cosima, while Fidi's excitement gives the evening a restless domestic edge.	Thursday, December 29: Wrote to my mother, which unfortunately brings me on to present events, a cause for the deepest mourning. Loulou writes to her father, R. completes his very fine letter to the King. Family lunch; after that, while R. takes his walk, the first act of Tristan und Isolde, played by Richter. In the evening R. reads us the words of it; but we wake up Fidi, and wander through the whole house, looking for a place to read the third act. It is cold downstairs, so we settle in the study, now given over to Prof. Nietzsche. But R. finds it too absurd, and he decides to read the third act in a lowered voice. The whole makes a tremendous impression on me. (Fidi very keyed up, dancing, laughing, etc.)
December 30, 1870	143	Gersdorff thanks Wagner for a photograph, while a hostile Beethoven article by Dorn accuses him of flattering the Bavarian king and is to be returned. Peters offers money for a coronation march, but Wagner cannot write to order, especially for such an occasion. News of the Loire army's dissolution and the start of bombardment mix with Wagner's open letter to Stade, Fidi's continued overexcitement, and the stripping of the Christmas tree.	Friday, December 30: From Lieutenant von Gersdorff in Montmorency, thanking R. for the photograph he sent him. Arrival of an article about Beethoven by Herr H. Dorn, in which among other things R. is accused of toadying to the King of Bavaria! The article will be returned to its conductor author, now living on a pension. The music publisher [Peters] wants a coronation march and offers R. 1,500 francs for it; the only pity is that R. cannot write to order, and particularly not a coronation march. The newspapers report the total dissolution of the Loire army. God grant it is true! The bombardment of a fort has begun. R. writes his open letter to Herr Stade. Fidi very keyed up, cannot sleep; we abandon the orange room and spend the evening in R.’s workroom, after the tree has been stripped bare by the children.
December 31, 1870	323	New Year's Eve brings calls on Tschudi and the Bassenheims, both hallowed by their connection to Wagner and Cosima's wedding, along with news that Mont Avron has been taken. In the carriage, Wagner relates his position toward Cosima to Tristan's incredulous love and reflects on the helpless power that overcame his concern for Hans, while Cosima's memories of Zurich and Tristan's origins make her melancholy. The year ends with Zurich quartet players rehearsing Beethoven, then midnight wishes among Nietzsche, Richter, Wagner, and Cosima as she prays for peace.	Saturday, December 31: From Countess Krockow (reporting among other things that in Saxony there is great sympathy for the French). R. and I pay New Year calls to our clergyman Tschudi (whom R. greets not without emotion, since he was so friendly toward us). Then the Bassenheims, who are also in R.’s eyes hallowed and worthy of respect, since they were present at our wedding. The Countess tells us that Mont Avron has been taken. In the carriage R. gives me a long look and says, after joking that I have too much breeding, that my affinity is reflected so comfortingly in my face; he looks back over the past and says: “My position in regard to you I can only describe in Tristan’s words in the second act—this attitude of hardly daring to believe which makes him a complete traitor toward Isolde; because poetry is always a step ahead, and only retrospectively can the reality prove how correctly the poet has seen things. How long did I suffer on Hans’s account before I recognized that here, as in Tristan, a power reigned against which everyone was helpless.” The reading of Tristan* made me melancholy inasmuch as it reminded me of Richard’s situation at that time in Zurich, and I cannot think of such false images, disappointments, and fleeting emanations of madness without tears; R. reproves me for these feelings and says I imagine things as far more significant than they had in fact been, though certainly in becoming aware of them I had matured. In the afternoon the quartet players from Zurich; R. rehearsed them in the F Major Quartet, Opus 59 (a favorite work of mine, if one may speak thus of such divine things), then the last (also F Major). Toward eleven o’clock the musicians go away; we stay up: Prof. Nietzsche, our good Richter, and we two. Midnight arrives; we wish each other a Happy New Year. May God bring us all peace!
No diary entries found.