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 May 1870 (31 total)

Date	Word Count	Subject	Content
May 1, 1870	200	The changeable foehn weather mirrors a day filled with political, religious, and international unease discussed with Countess Bassenheim. Reports from Richter about Munich and Die Meistersinger supply comic and hostile anecdotes, while Cosima returns to children, fairy tales, and a rainy walk with Wagner. In the evening Wagner imagines the future Die Sieger and its prelude, insisting that music alone can convey the mysteries of reincarnation.	Sunday, May 1: Deceptiveness of the foehn, one moment fine weather, the next rain. Loldi sees a robin and says, “It’s like Mama’s shawl.” Countess Bassenheim visits me, survey of the world, in which there are enough curious things going on (France-Rome plebiscite—infallibility—England-Greece Marathon—murder of the embassy people—international conspiracy—in Germany the three J’s). We read to the Countess yesterday’s letter from Richter, in which he first says that since his dismissal the number of Jews has increased by 45,000 (!), then that at a performance of Die Meistersinger a Jew shouted after the Overture, “Oh, the poor orchestra!,” hissed, and then, rebuked by his neighbor, joined in the applause himself, saying, “You see, the beautiful bits I applaud, too, but there are only one or two beautiful bits—or let’s say three.” Lunch with the children. Later I read them Sicilian fairy tales. Then I go for a walk in wind and rain with R. In the evening R. says: “When one day in my old age I write Die Sieger, I shall give it a prelude in which the first part of the story (in which the Chandala maiden spurns Ananda) will be told. Only music can convey the mysteries of reincarnation.”
May 2, 1870	43	The day is stripped down to work: lessons and household rhythms for Cosima, composition for Wagner, and a reply to Constantin Frantz. Wagner compares the fashion for isolated operatic excerpts to the equally distorting habit of extracting quotations from tragedies. With little arriving from outside beyond newspapers and money, the children’s dances and fairy tales provide the day’s livelier texture.	Monday, May 2: Children’s work. R.’s work. Then he replies to C. Frantz and compares the mania for detached pieces from opera with the mania for quotations from the tragedies. Nothing from outside, only newspapers and money from Berlin. Children’s dances and fairy tales.
May 3, 1870	27	Bad weather accompanies the arrival of a new manservant and Wagner’s frustration at being unable to work. Cosima spends extended time with the children on geography, fairy tales, and other lessons. The entry is spare, emphasizing domestic labor and creative blockage under oppressive weather.	Tuesday, May 3: Dire weather arrives with the new manservant. R. complains of not being able to work; with the children much time on geography, fairy tales, etc.
May 4, 1870	340	A breakfast conversation about Richter’s shallow Paris sightseeing leads Wagner into a rich account of how childhood encounters with Greek imagery formed his sense of beauty and his contempt for decorations and militarized display. His regret at not interrupting Cosima during lessons makes her feel the cost of caring for the children without help, even as she wants above all to keep him content. Letters from the king, an absurd invitation to Cosima, and a damagingly edited published letter to Eberle upset Wagner so much that he rises before dawn to intensify his reply.	Wednesday, May 4: When our breakfast conversation brings us to Richter and his stay in Paris (he did not see Notre Dame and in the Louvre only Napoleon’s boots), R. says: “People who learned nothing of the ‘ancient Greeks’ in their childhood have no eye for beauty. All my later feelings about the ugliness of our present world stem from looking at the illustrations in Moritz’s mythology. Perseus with his fine helmet, but otherwise naked, delighted me and made me disgusted with our whole military system, with its buttoned-up uniforms plastered with decorations. When I read that crowned poets received only an olive wreath as prize, I was thrilled, and I despised the people who strutted about in all their ribbons. It was respect for the olive wreath which gave me my contempt for decorations, not democratic affectation or plebeian crudeness, as your father, for instance, certainly imagines.” He works, I with the children. At lunch it cuts me to the quick when he says that in the excitement of work he has often wanted to come up to me, but, knowing that I was busy teaching the children, he stayed away. He said I should really engage a governess for the children. I have to weep, for I feel I have to make this sacrifice, yet how much I want him always to be contented! Letters—one to R. from the King in the usual strain—that he could never be unfaithful to him, etc.—one to me from a lieutenant: I am invited to write for a newspaper!!! Very unpleasant impression from the printing, with omissions, of a letter from R. to the music director Eberle; the omissions distort the letter so much that Eckert and Betz must feel offended, hence, no doubt, their silence. R. is very upset about this, he writes at once to Eckert and gets up at 4 o’clock in the morning (Thursday) to make his letter even more emphatic. Then he again sees the sunrise from the Orange Room, as at the time of Fidi’s birth. Last dancing lesson.
May 5, 1870	42	Nietzsche writes to Cosima while Wagner remains unwell and dissatisfied with his work. A walk offers some relief, but the lawyer’s letter introduces fresh trouble over the children’s certificates of residence. The evening is spent in conversation and practical preparation for a hoped-for outing.	Thursday, May 5: Letter to me from Prof. Nietzsche. R. not well and not satisfied with his work. Walk in the afternoon. A letter from the lawyer, trouble over the children’s certificates of residence. Evening of conversation, preparations for the projected outing tomorrow.
May 6, 1870	39	Cold, miserable weather cancels the planned outing and keeps the day indoors. Wagner writes to the king and Hans Herrig while Cosima searches for birthday poems, writes to Claire, and receives Frau Schure’s letter. Wagner’s poor health worries Cosima, giving the short entry an undertone of watchfulness.	Friday, May 6: No outing, wretched cold weather; R. writes letters (to the King and to Hans Herrig), I look for poems for R.’s birthday. Letter from Frau Schuré. R. not well, I am worried about him. Wrote to Claire.
May 7, 1870	341	Children’s coughs and Wagner’s poor health sit beside his praise for Cosima’s conciliatory letter to Franziska Ritter. Berlioz’s memoirs lead Wagner to reject Paris more firmly and to reflect on Berlioz’s tragic dependence on the very operatic world he could not master. Press comparisons with Beethoven, comic talk of the lamplighter, Fidi’s possible calling, and the beginning of Phaedo make the day intellectually lively but physically anxious.	Saturday, May 7: More children’s coughs! In the morning R. exclaims to me, “You really are a miraculous woman, I have just been considering your letter to Franziska Ritter, it is perhaps the finest thing you have ever done.” (Some ill feeling had arisen, which I was attempting to dispel.) Then he comes to me and we get on the topic of Berlioz’s memoirs, which he is now reading. “In him one can so clearly see the reciprocity between natural inclinations and external conditions and relationships. Everything in Paris is horrible to him, and yet he cannot give it up—this horribleness is for him the whole world. His main grief was opera, which he could never master.” Newspapers from Vienna; a passage in which it is maintained that the Eroica foretells Wagner particularly displeases R.: “I find it horrible when people compare me with Beethoven; I always feel like saying, ‘What do you know of B.?’” I explain to him how I think it is meant (a glorification of the Germanic character, not of Napoleon, hence a pointer toward Wagner). He laughs and says his consciousness has outgrown him. (In his letter to the King he had called me his consciousness.) We really had to laugh yesterday when Jakob told us that the old lamplighter at the Schweizerhof (who always greets R. with a “Good morning, Herr Richard Wagner”) has just recovered from a mortal illness; now he goes around picking camomile flowers and eating them; he also puts a few on his nose during the night, in order to prolong his life, yet all the while he is declaring, “Oh, dying is splendid!” R. says that Berlioz’s memoirs have strengthened his resolve never again to have anything to do with Paris. Fun over Fidi’s profession (surgeon), but we stick to our opinion, for a person must have a definite calling. R. is not well and in an agitated state, but all the same he works a little. I am very worried when he is indisposed, worried and grieved. In the evening began on Phaedo.
May 8, 1870	54	A pale but pleasant day carries Wagner’s work forward while Cosima attends a rehearsal of the Huldigungsmarsch at the barracks. Her nervousness about the event alters the family schedule, moving the children’s meal to accommodate the rehearsal. The evening returns to Phaedo, keeping Socratic reflection in quiet counterpoint to practical preparations.	Sunday, May 8: Nice but pale weather. R. works, I to a rehearsal of the “Huldigungsmarsch” at the barracks. God knows how this will turn out, perhaps my star will help me, but I am somewhat nervous. Meal with the children at 4 o’clock on account of the rehearsal. In the evening continued with Phaedo.
May 9, 1870	74	Wagner unexpectedly chooses to proceed with the outing, and the family travels joyfully to Brunnen and the Gruetli despite uncertain weather. Cosima remembers Grandmama and Daniel on their shared birthday, folding private memorial feeling into the excursion. The weather deteriorates, but cheer remains, and Wagner’s nighttime call of the Siegfried-Bruennhilde love theme gives the journey a romantic close.	Monday, May 9: To my surprise R. decides on the outing. We go in spite of the pale clouds. Great joy among the children, arrival in Brunnen; drive to the Grütli, I remember Grandmama’s and Daniel’s birthdays, both today. The weather turns bad, but we remain cheerful. In the evening, as I go to bed, I hear R. out on the Axenstrasse calling to me the theme from the love scene between Siegfried and Brünnhilde.
May 10, 1870	328	A miserable boardinghouse night in Brunnen becomes an occasion for Cosima to apply Socrates’ thought about pleasure and pain to the relief of returning to bed after tending the children. Back home, letters bring deaths, grief, legal and professional irritations, while Wagner surprises her with a spring outfit. His blackbird-inspired Beethoven scherzo, reflections on poetry and scoring, and work on Goetterdaemmerung restore creative intensity after the failed excursion.	Tuesday, May 10: Terrible boardinghouse night in Brunnen. Kos barking, people shouting, Boni coughing, beds and doors creaking, etc. I have to get up often to attend to Boni, and then I think of what Socrates said about pleasant and unpleasant things; my bed, otherwise unbearable, seemed very pleasant to me each time I leaped back into it after attending to the little ones, and so I laughed, recalling the two ends. R. got no sleep, either. We decide to return home at 10 o’clock. At home, plebiscite—yes; letters, Clemens Brockhaus reports on the terrible state of his family following the calamity, then an obituary notice, Constantin Frantz has lost his son, R.’s last letter once again gave him a commission for the cemetery!! Arrival of Prof. Nietzsche’s speech in Latin, then of a lovely spring outfit which R. had ordered for me as a surprise! Letter from Frl. von Meysenbug (giving R. little pleasure). R. astonished to have received no reply from Eckert; so another enemy made! The latter will have taken advantage of the most convenient piece of gossip to divest himself of his gratitude. When I come down to R. in the afternoon, he plays me a piece he has just thought out, “Blackbird Theme, Scherzo in the Beethoven Manner”—he copied it from our blackbird. “When I hear something like that, I call it quite simply a Beethoven allegro, meaning that he is the creator of this form, he is the master, without him it would not exist.” “How I should like now to write poetry!” he says. “What easy, swift work—what is it compared with writing scores? It is the skeleton, like bare branches, the tree in winter; music is the blossom, the leaves.” Music in the evening. He plays me passages from the first act of Götterdämmerung. He then complains of the difficulty of the scene between Waltraute and Brünnhilde, the one in agitated haste, the other expansively moved that a friend has come to visit her.
May 11, 1870	81	The children prepare poems for Wagner’s birthday while Cosima divides herself between his affectionate summons and the secret work of embroidery. A visit to Countess Bassenheim includes what may be a final sight of the old Prince. Wagner’s encounter with a cuckoo unsettles Cosima, whose undefined worry turns even small signs into omens.	Wednesday, May 11: The children busy with the poems; R. calls me down while he is working; he wants to embrace me. I leave him in haste, in order to embroider, on account of his birthday. In the afternoon to Countess B.’s, saw the old Prince perhaps for the last time. Great alarm during the day; R. had a cuckoo in front of his window, he saw it and describes its powerful form to us. Everything makes me worry, I don’t know why.
May 12, 1870	66	Cosima rises early to work on the birthday folder while letters from Esser and Pusinelli bring friendly recognition, including kindness toward her. Fidi’s lingering hoarseness worries her, though the children provide bright moments through Boni’s French fairy tale and Loldi’s image of the moon. Wagner remains unwell as talk of the plebiscite occupies the household.	Thursday, May 12: Got up very early because of the folder. Nice letters from the former conductor Esser and R.’s old friend Pusinelli, who mentions me in the most friendly way. Worry about Fidi, whose hoarseness persists. Boni surprises me with a nice fairy tale, quite well told in French. Loldi says, “The moon has a cheek missing.” R. not very well. (Much talk about the plebiscite.)
May 13, 1870	225	The Vienna Beethoven Committee invites Wagner to conduct the Ninth Symphony, but he refuses the public occasion and imagines conducting it only at home for Cosima. Illness keeps him wrapped against a cold while Cosima reads Wallenstein, leading them to defend the neglected strength of Thekla and Max’s love. Their talk expands toward future Bayreuth performances and a theory of love as magnetic certainty amid a phantom world.	Friday, May 13: Beethoven Committee in Vienna invites R. to conduct the 9th Symphony (Lachner Fidelio, my father the Missa Solemnis). R. does not want to: “When I at last have a home of my own, I shall conduct the Symphony for you, but I want nothing to do with all that rabble.” He is unfortunately not well. Marie Bassenheim with us for lunch. In the evening R. wrapped himself in blankets to ward off a cold; I read him scenes from Wallenstein and we come to the conclusion that the play—particularly the relationship between Thekla and Max—is far too little appreciated. R. tells me how impressed he was, when he came to Würzburg, to be told by a man named Seiffert that as a poet Heine was much better than Schiller. We talk about having the plays performed in Bayreuth, for the disgraceful way in which they are done spoils them for one—for example, Thekla is always shown as weak and tearful, whereas she possesses all the ruthlessness of true love. “There he is!” reminds us of Eva’s blissful cry in Die Meistersinger. “It is magnetism which contrives, for example, that the sheep finds in the wide world the grass which is good for it, all the rest is shadowy show. Thus a woman in love—the whole world consists of phantoms, but she knows where he is.”
May 14, 1870	87	Wagner works while Cosima’s white gown prompts him to identify her with Thekla and with the models for what is finest in his imagination. Fidi’s hoarseness still worries her, but Wagner’s play with the children fills the house with warmth. News of Hans conducting in Florence and a rain-soaked town trip complete a day that remains cheerful despite weather and concern.	Saturday, May 14: R. at work, I visit him in a white gown, he laughs and says, “The White Lady, or, rather, Thekla, since for all fine things I have you as model; that’s why I am happy; you knew I could be helped.” Fidi is unfortunately still hoarse. R. romps around a lot with the children, who are really very sweet. In the newspaper I read that Hans has conducted a concert in Florence. To town with R.; a terrible rainstorm, over which we just laugh, however.
May 15, 1870	116	Levi’s dignified refusal to conduct Die Walkuere arrives on a blazing spring day alive with Fidi’s babble and Wagner’s sketching of Waltraute’s narration. Hoffmann’s tale delights the family and gives Wagner a way to think about civilization’s pressure on nature. The lawyer’s inability to predict the Berlin proceedings reopens practical uncertainty, while the evening’s insects and growth give the day a strong sense of natural abundance.	Sunday, May 15: Very seemly letter from the conductor Levi, who has refused to conduct Die Walküre. Gloriously fine day; burning sunshine; to the sounds of Fidi’s “Dadadada” R. sketches part of Waltraute’s narration (he “sends off the ravens”). Family lunch in the best of spirits. Afterward R. reads Hoffmann’s “Das fremde Kind” to me and the elder children; great enjoyment in this fine tale, which R. says expresses very well the pressures of civilization, the breach between Nature and culture. Visit from our lawyer, who does not understand the procedure in Berlin and cannot at all foresee when it will end. Letter to Prof. Nietzsche. Fine evening, cicadas, cockchafers, great exuberance of growth, sap and strength everywhere.
May 16, 1870	140	Cosima begins with a troubled meditation on passion as something that can feel like the death rather than the fulfillment of love. Daily life continues through Claire’s letter, garden lessons, Wagner’s sketching, town errands, and a public statement about Die Walkuere. Herrig’s obsessive tone, Fidi’s hoarseness, baptism certificates, and reflections on Socrates in Phaedo leave the day sad, thoughtful, and morally strained.	Monday, May 16: If only we could curb passion—if only it could be banished from our lives! Its approach now grieves me, as if it were the death of love. Letter from Claire; worked with the children in the garden, R. meanwhile at his sketching. Drove to town with Lusch; R. writes Esser a statement, designed for publication, on his attitude toward the production of Die Walküre. Letter from Herr Hans Herrig; very curious—he seems really to be more obsessed than filled with R.’s ideas. Fidi still hoarse, I very sad about it. Yesterday evening we read Phaedo; I thought of what R. said to me about Socrates: that his wise circumspection, his absolute contemplation, which nothing could destroy, had been encountered only once in the world, whereas even the saints had been present in numbers. (Wrote off concerning the certificates of baptism.)
May 17, 1870	71	Wagner’s bad night sends him into the garden at dawn to listen and make raven studies, leaving him exhausted and Cosima full of omen-like fears after a bat and Fidi’s continued hoarseness. The children’s visit to Countess Bassenheim for a birthday, including Eva’s first invitation, keeps family life moving. The evening returns to Wallenstein, giving the troubled day a literary close.	Tuesday, May 17: R. had a very bad night, got up, ran out into the garden, listened to the dawn, made “raven studies” (but it croaked horribly), and in the end felt very wretched. Yesterday evening a bat flew around him, which alarmed me considerably. Fidi still hoarse; I take the children to Countess Bassenheim’s, her little daughter’s birthday, Eva invited for the first time. In the evening read Wallenstein with R.
May 18, 1870	41	Wagner remains unwell and Cosima is worn out, but Fidi’s improvement and fine weather bring some relief. The children begin botany lessons, linking education to the outdoor life of Tribschen. A letter from Nietzsche and the start of Wallenstein’s Death frame the evening with friendship and Schillerian gravity.	Wednesday, May 18: R. still unwell, I myself worn out, but Fidi somewhat better. Fine weather. First botany lesson with the children; fine afternoon out of doors with R. Nice letter to him from Prof. Nietzsche. In the evening started Wallensteins Tod.
May 19, 1870	93	Breakfast talk about Wallenstein leads Wagner back to his theories in Opera and Drama, especially the difficulty of exposition that informs without moving the audience. Cosima is distressed that months of preparation for Wagner’s birthday are being frustrated by external mishaps. Fidi’s recovery is the day’s clearest consolation amid illness, disappointment, and the lesson that outside forces cannot be controlled.	Thursday, May 19: R. said at breakfast that Wallenstein had brought back to his mind what he wrote in Opera and Drama about the nature of drama; to make something clear to the audience, one needs to put in so much which in fact leaves it unaffected. R. is indisposed, I bothered by things going wrong for his birthday; I have been working on it for about six months, and almost everything is letting me down; at such times our only help is the acknowledgment that we cannot control external influences! Fidi getting better.
May 20, 1870	221	Birthday frustrations continue, but hot May weather, the lake, and Wagner’s image of melody give Cosima a richer frame for the day. Fidi’s splendor becomes proof to Wagner of the purpose behind their tested love, while Lusch’s decision to free her birds teaches renunciation through childhood feeling. The king’s gift of the horse Grane transforms the afternoon into joy, movement, and symbolic grandeur.	Friday, May 20: Continuation of the birthday contrarinesses, but glorious hot weather, the work in the garden more planned than carried out. The boats on the lake remind one of that image which R. gave for melody in Opera and Drama: it floats above the element, is distinct from it, but cannot exist without it. Fidi, our prince, looks splendid: “Through him the Universal Spirit has shown what it wanted, why it put our love and our loyalty to the test.” I prepare Lusch to release the birds given to her on her birthday; it costs her a great struggle, but she decides to keep birds only in winter and to free them in summer. How much I praise the star which has allowed the children to pass their youth in this solitary place and in R.’s proximity! None of life’s battles, no anguish will ever be able to affect this felicity. After lunch, when we are reading Wallenstein, Jakob comes in struggling for breath: the King’s head coachman is here, has brought a horse. The arrival of Grane, the children’s joy, Thespis wagon (the little ones jump on to the wagon and dance). Poor Fritz! The coachman brings good news of the King. Happy walk with R. in the evening in the finest May weather. Fidi on the horse, earnest, wondering, but secure.
May 21, 1870	358	Cosima rises before dawn to write Loulou a poem for the release of her birthday birds, turning the act into a lesson about love without possession. She spends the day grooming the children, preparing Wagner’s celebration, receiving baptism certificates, and attending the rehearsal. The evening’s completion of Wallenstein confirms her and Wagner’s admiration for the work despite its structural burdens.	Saturday, May 21: Awake at 4 o’clock, rise at 4:30 and write a poem for Loulou to speak while freeing her birds tomorrow. Und bleibt ihr fort so lebet wohl nicht ist der Liebe Wesen hohl, wie dürfte Liebe sie sich taufen will sie Besitz mit Kummer erkaufen. Liebe Vöglein flieget fort, gedenket mein am freien Ort, ein Nest euch bauet drin Kleine erschauet, Männchen sing freier. Und fallen, süsser Tau, wohl Tränen, sie weihen Blumen unser Trennen. Weibchen brüt Eier. Schöner Fink folg dem Wink, liebster Zeisig eifrig eilig zeig dich die Tür ist auf nehmt euren Lauf. Zu mir kommt wieder fällt Schnee hernieder, friert es auch draussen, bei mir kommt hausen, die Kleinen bringt her. Willkommene Wiederkehr! Der schönste Tag ist heut dass sein Vogel auch sich freut will von Herzen das Kind, drum liebe Vöglein, geschwind, Ziehet frei dahin Es folget euch froh mein Sinn. [“Dear birdies, fly away, think of me when you are free; build a nest for your young; cock, sing more freely, hen, hatch eggs. Come back to me if snow falls; and if outside it freezes, seek shelter here with me; bring your little ones: A welcome return! And if you come not again, then fare you well: nothing in love is vain; how could it be called love, if it paid for ownership in sorrow? And if tears, sweet dewdrops, should fall, they but dedicate our parting to the flowers. Lovely finch, swiftly follow the call; dearest siskin, show how you can hasten the door is open: go your way. Today is the loveliest of days, that her bird should also be happy is the girl’s dearest wish. So, dear birdies, quick: fly away to freedom! My thoughts follow you in joy.”] Did the children’s hair and made further preparations. Letters from R.’s old acquaintance and companion in misery, E. Kietz, who wants to visit him. Arrival of the certificates of baptism. I drive to the rehearsal—as far as I can judge, the piece is going well. We finish Wallenstein, with the greatest of admiration for this masterpiece, which only the necessity of being divided into three separate plays has damaged in a few particulars.
May 22, 1870	277	Wagner’s birthday begins with Cosima’s exhaustion and tears, but the ceremony she has arranged overwhelms him with pleasure and gratitude. Children, flowers, soldiers, the Huldigungsmarsch, poems, letters, telegrams, and gifts make the morning a carefully staged tribute that deeply moves him. A storm cancels the later outdoor festivities, yet messages from the king, Nietzsche, Hans Herrig, and Cosima’s father give the day lasting emotional weight.	Sunday, May 22: During the night decorated the stairs and the vestibule, but I note by my mood that I am no longer up to festive occasions, and now, even before the day begins, here I sit, writing this and weeping. God grant my children joy today; whoever has suffered much loses the capacity to laugh. On festive days in particular one realizes how sad life is! The unremarked passing of days without unspoken fears is surely the best thing for sore hearts. God bless all whom I love, and give me rest soon! The pleasure R. felt soon swept my melancholy mood away. At 8 o’clock I positioned the children with wreaths of roses: Loldi and Eva at the front door; farther down in the bower, beneath a laurel, Boni; at the bottom of the steps, beside the bust loaded down with flowers, myself and Fidi; at the end of the tableau Loulou. The music (“Huldigungsmarsch”) began at 8:30, the 45 soldiers grouped under the fir tree, at the conclusion R. emerged sobbing from the house and thanked the conductor; he was deeply moved, making me almost regret having arranged this little ceremony. Afterward the children recited poems to him, we breakfasted in gay spirits and then went off to rest. In the afternoon the birds were to be released and some fireworks lit, but a huge storm came up and we ended the day quietly. Many letters and telegrams (King, Richter, Standhartner, etc.), a fine poem from Hans Herrig (“The Three Norns”), a nice letter from Prof. Nietzsche. A telegram from my father (“Forever with you, on bright as on gloomy days”) pleased and moved me greatly.
May 23, 1870	194	The delayed bird-release festival turns from symbolic freedom into tragedy when one hesitant chaffinch is killed by Jakob’s dog. Cosima reads the accident as a grim lesson about fate and the helplessness of human good intentions, where one small life pays for the others’ liberty. The first drive with Grane, evening fireworks, and Wagner’s naming of Cosima as the conductor of his life give the day a moving but shadowed close.	Monday, May 23: Long sleep; then the delayed festivities. Arrival of the playpen designed by Hans, I put Fidi in it, the children gather around it, Loulou recites her poem in front of the cage, then we carry the cage into the garden; four of the birds fly away immediately; only a single chaffinch remained behind, unwilling to follow the calls of its brethren; for fear that the cat might get it, I tell Jakob to take it out and give it to Loulou to place on a bush; this is done, but probably the shock numbed it, for it flew, not upward, but downward, and Jakob’s dog, which we had not even noticed, pounced on it—it was dead. Thus this little festival of joy ended in tragedy, the poor bird had sensed its coming death. What a grim lesson—how wretched the human being’s pitiful good intentions in relation to Fate! The finch had to pay with its life for the freedom of its brethren. I write to Prof. Nietzsche; after lunch, first drive with Grane to Stanz. In the evening our fireworks. Alluding to the morning serenade, R. calls me the conductor of his life.
May 24, 1870	128	Wagner writes birthday replies and reflects on the generations of followers around him, contrasting an earlier worthless second generation with a more serious younger one. Cosima teaches, receives Agatha Aufdermauer, and pursues the jeweler’s report about Semper. Philoctetes and a letter to Frau Schure close a day that moves between business, visitors, aesthetic judgment, and Wagner’s aphorism on Wallenstein.	Tuesday, May 24: R. writes letters (business and otherwise); Herr Weissheimer continues his shameless conduct toward R. Frl. von Meysenbug also sends birthday congratulations. R. sinks into meditation about the second generation, which was attracted to him but which was worthless, whereas the third, now 25 years old, appears through its earnestness and concentration to grasp R.’s ideas. I work with the children; in the afternoon visit of Agatha Aufdermauer from Brunnen, our Tribschen enchants her. Then to the jeweler, who has been to see Semper; the latter received him at first hostilely, but then gradually gave some explanations. In the evening Philoctetes. I write to Frau Schurd and quote to her R.’s saying about Wallenstein: “Born under Saturn and flirting with Jupiter, who does not repay his trust.”
May 25, 1870	348	Gifts, flowers from the king, theater news, reconciled misunderstandings with Eckert, and concern for Prince Wallerstein make the day unusually crowded. Wagner returns to Goetterdaemmerung and refuses to answer a Beethoven Committee letter signed by men he finds unacceptable. His evening discourse on Schopenhauer’s Will and remorse gives Cosima the sense of being led through him into the secrets of the world, before Philoctetes and absurd Vatican Council reports complete the day.	Wednesday, May 25: Arrival of two pineapples from Paris, we suspect Judith. Letter from Esser (Richter reports that Wüllner is to conduct Die Walküre in Munich!!). Arrival of flowers, the King has sent them. Letter from Eckert; a misunderstanding, his wife was dangerously ill; pleasure at one ill-wisher the less. I write to Dr. Pusinelli about the hanging lamp. Bad news of Prince Wallerstein. (R. calls me “my good consciousness.”) Worked with the children, R. resumes Götterdämmerung. Drive to inquire about the Prince’s condition. R. writes to Richter, asking him to go to the secretary of the Beethoven Committee and tell him that R. finds it impossible to reply to a letter signed by Messrs. Hanslick and Schelle. In the evening R. remarks that Fidi has literally blossomed in the open air; in the morning he had been so small, in the afternoon in the garden he was strong—“that is how we see it, anyway.” I: “If we see it, then it must be so, for what brings about change in us will also affect the child.” “That is just the problem,” R. replies and, going on from there, explains to me the nature of Schopenhauer’s Will (from Brahma to Buddha), “the urge toward life, then toward knowledge, and finally toward destruction. Remorse—that is to say, the knowledge that inside us something lives which is much more powerful than our idea of evil.” R. spoke for a long time, beautifully and movingly, and I felt as if through him I were penetrating into the secrets of the world, but only through him. Afterward finished Philoctetes, with unbounded admiration. The letters from the Council amuse us, the discussion on infallibility opened with the following argument: Saint Peter, crucified head downward, provides the symbol of the head bearing the limbs, for “the Sicilians, to whom Saint Peter had preached the doctrine of infallibility, had in their doubt called on the Virgin Mary, who replied that she did in fact remember her son’s declaring Peter to be infallible!” “The sun shines down on baseness,” says R., reading in the newspapers about the temps de l’empereur.
May 26, 1870	120	Newspaper reports transform Cosima’s hired birthday serenade into an public ovation, amusing Wagner as an example of how history falsifies events. A woodland outing with the children lets Loulou show spontaneous charity toward an old woman. Merry Wives, a visit from young Count Bassenheim, and a letter to Judith round out a lighter Ascension Day.	Thursday, May 26: Ascension Day. The newspapers write of an “ovation” given to R. by the military band; this amuses R. “Thus is history made,” he says. “It would never occur to anybody that you engaged these people. There was not the slightest intention of giving me an ovation, but I am afraid that most of the ovations of which one hears are like that.” In the afternoon in the woods with the children, Loulou pleases me; in fun we had given her 50 centimes, an old lady approached and of her own accord she asked me to allow her to give the money to the woman. In the evening Shakespeare’s Merry Wives. (Visit of the young Count B.; we write to Judith.)
May 27, 1870	63	Cosima’s meeting with the priest brings little progress and even reproach over the birthday serenade. Wagner writes to the king and is delighted when the doctor praises Fidi’s exceptional health and beauty. A fine afternoon, Fidi’s sunbath, reading in the hermitage, and Wagner’s terse claim that music is pure will give the day a concentrated philosophical calm.	Friday, May 27: Conference with the priest; little of benefit; among other things he reproaches me for the morning serenade. R. meanwhile writes to the King. He is greatly delighted with the doctor, who tells him he has never seen such a fine boy as Fidi. Fine afternoon. Fidi taking a sun bath; read in the hermitage. “Music is nothing but will,” says R.
May 28, 1870	200	Cosima sends the priest’s attestation to Berlin and writes to Claire while Wagner works. A drive leads to reflection on animal souls, death, and the need to imagine what follows death in a friendly light. The Merry Wives ends in delight and admiration for Shakespeare’s elfin England, sharpened by irritation at Auerbach’s affected nature writing.	Saturday, May 28: Sent the priest’s attestation to the law courts in Berlin, then wrote to Claire. R. works. A drive in the afternoon; when we remark on Kos’s intelligence, I ask, “Where does the soul of such an animal go?” “We must think of that as a really friendly place,” R. replies. “It is only Death itself of which we must think solemnly, as a test of life; what comes after, however, in as friendly a light as possible.” In the evening conclusion of The Merry Wives with great enjoyment and admiration; R. says that particularly on the stage this work comes splendidly to life, entertaining, many-sided. During the fifth act he says, “Shakespeare’s head was full of these fairies, this elfin world—Old England lived inside him.” “And so we have read three great poets one after another (Schiller, Sophocles, Shakespeare), and each of their works has both moved and surprised us, since the work of such geniuses always has something inconceivable about it.” An article by Berthold Auerbach (no such genius he!) about woods is printed in the newspaper; R. says he found it unreadable on account of its affected closeness to Nature: “These fellows are a real nuisance” (the Jews).
May 29, 1870	519	Children’s games and woodland plans unfold beside Wagner’s work and news of Laube’s degrading theatrical dismissal. A murder case and a fatal steamer accident turn the day toward the randomness of fate and the impossibility of secure happiness. Supper talk on Mozart and the start of Schiller’s Jungfrau von Orleans lead Wagner into contrasts among Mozart, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller.	Sunday, May 29: All kinds of fun and games with the children while R. works. We hear that Laube has had to leave the theater in Leipzig, since the town, deeming it necessary to close it down, would not give him any compensation: “How degrading for such an old hand, to be caught up so in the common grind.” Walk through the woods with the older children; R. could not bring himself to leave the little ones at home, so we turned back, fetched them in the carriage, and then had them driven home, while we walked home through the woods. At lunch we spoke of the need to possess Shakespeare in English, Walter Scott, too; regarding the latter, it suddenly occurs to R. that he covered the whole of English history in his novels, except for the period Shakespeare dealt with. A murder case which is filling the newspapers (the entire family of an inoffensive smith murdered by a thief) reminds us of the terrible fate which governs us all. It is not the murder itself which fills us with horror, but the fearful lot which can be meted out to any one of us. On our return home, Vreneli tells us she heard in the town that a boat had been sucked into the paddle of the steamer, and the man and child in it killed; our people in Tribschen heard the screams of the passengers on the steamer. With such warnings, such signs, who can call himself fortunate here below? Conversation at supper brings us to Mozart. Dealing with Die Zauberflöte, R. says, “Mozart is the founder of German declamation—what fine humanity resounds in the Priest’s replies to Tamino! Think how stiff such high priests are in Gluck. When you consider this text, which was meant to be a farce, and the theater for which it was written, and compare what was written before Mozart’s time (even Cimarosa’s still-famous Matrimonio Segreto)—on the one side the wretched German Singspiel, on the other the ornate Italian opera—one is amazed by the soul he managed to breathe into such a text. And what a life he led! A bit of tinsel at the time of his popularity, but for that he had then to pay all the more dearly. He did not complete his work, which is why one cannot really compare him with Raphael, for there is still too much convention in him.” We begin Die Jungfrau von Orleans; at the conclusion of the prologue R. says, “Yes, it all begs for music, though that is not to say it fails as a work of art.” When I tell him that just one thing offends me, the father, Arc, whom I should prefer to see handled in the Shakespearean manner, R. says, “Don’t even think of it: Sh[akespeare] is a natural genius, Schiller an artistic one; he and Goethe wanted to wring true pathos from the German language and rescue the German stage from vulgar realism.” As, in tears, we come to the end of the first act, R. says, “As Goethe touches us through his objectivity, Schiller touches us through his subjectivity.”
May 30, 1870	214	Practical errands and wedding-year elegance are overshadowed by reports that Marpurg may conduct Die Walkuere in Munich, which provokes Wagner’s indignant reply. Cosima worries over Loulou, Hans in unsettled Florence, and the king, while Richter and Klindworth supply further theatrical and musical news. Evening reading of Jungfrau von Orleans continues under Wagner’s insistence that Cosima, not royal leisure alone, made his productivity possible.	Monday, May 30: Buying clothes; R. tells me he has ordered fine bright trousers, having told himself, “In your wedding year you are entitled to look elegant.” I am worried about Loulou, who is complaining of a headache. In the newspaper it is reported that the first rehearsal of Die Walküre took place on May 16 and that Herr Marpurg from Darmstadt is to conduct the performances. R. very upset, writes to Herr Marpurg to tell him it is not a question of his (R.’s) being short of conductors—just that all of them with any sense of decency are refusing to conduct the work in the composer’s absence. Reflections about the King; gnawing grief. There is talk in the paper of great disturbances in Florence, which worries me on Hans’s account; how even the most favored of people are affected by the burdens of life! Richter writes from Vienna, giving news of Herr Horawitz; in character the ambiguous counterpart of Herr Julius Lang; a true Falstaff’s army! In the evening Die Jungfrau von Orleans. (Letter from Klindworth in Moscow, who is arranging Siegfried for the piano and says how grateful we must all be to the King for providing R. with the leisure to write such works. “It was something else which made this leisure productive,” says R.)
May 31, 1870	343	Wagner jokes that if transmigration were known, bureaucracy would immediately regulate it, then receives Cosima in formal dress to amuse her. Kietz’s visit brings conversation, confusion, judgments about painting and music, and a striking remark about Fidi’s eyes. The social strain leaves Cosima despondent and fearful, especially after reading of suffering in Florence, and she turns to Goethe and Schiller for inward steadiness.	Tuesday, May 31: When we were talking yesterday evening about the transmigration of souls, R. cried: “Thank God this is all a deep mystery, otherwise mankind would by now have put it all on an official basis. ‘You will become a bird, you a dog,’ a policeman would tell us.” In the morning R. receives me wearing a tail coat and a stand-up collar—“since you like formality so much.” The children say he looks like “a gentleman.” At eleven o’clock arrival of the painter Kietz; much confusion; from the lunchtime conversation I remember R.’s words to Kietz: “You say painters stand closer to Nature than musicians. Nonsense, a baby cries before it sees, and we hear this cry.” Herr Kietz says of Fidi, “He has a sword in his eyes.” In the evening we are rather tired from so much talking and listening; the May wine helps a little, but we are off our usual track. It has an odd effect on me, I relapse more and more into silence and feel that I am incapable of sustaining any sort of contact with other people; my mood becomes despondent, indefinable fears oppress me, my heart is like a creature in flight. By chance I read that the drought in Florence is so severe that it has led almost to starvation; this brought me into a state of grief and alarm, speaking is no help, all that helps is the communion with great minds in the company of R. When I retired to my room yesterday evening, I had to take up the correspondence of Goethe and Schiller in order to calm my spirits. A feeling of quiet resignation took possession of me—let come what must! Talking about R.’s friend, the philologist Lehrs, Kietz told us that Lehrs had once asked him to light a fire and had scolded him for having no sense of architecture; Kietz had then laid the fire according to his instructions (L. could no longer rise from his chair); before the fire had burned halfway down, Lehrs himself had expired! (Concern over Loulou’s headache.)
No diary entries found.