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 January 1874 (29 total)

Date	Word Count	Subject	Content
January 1, 1874	153	The year opens with a fragile mix of ceremony and dread: a family outing and lunch are shadowed by worries over money, patronage, and the silence that may follow if the King does not come through. A raven briefly feels like a sign, but the day ends in real alarm when R. falls ill and the doctor is summoned.	Thursday, January 1: The bells summon in the New Year; we go for a drive. Family lunch; thoughts of past years: “We have endured difficulties enough for each other’s sake.” Thoughts of R.’s father Geyer and how he loved giving them presents. Thoughts of our undertaking, the silence in which we shall wrap ourselves if, as seems likely, the King does not help us. At coffee after lunch I see a raven, which settles with outspread wings on the tree before my window and then soon flies away. R. says it is a good sign; the raven was the chief bird of the Germans, and Wolfram was the most exalted name, combining the two sacred creatures, wolf and raven; lion and eagle were traditional emblems. Nevertheless, the sign alarms me. In the evening R. is seized by a shivering fit; I put him to bed, the doctor comes, and hopes it will lead to nothing worse.
January 2, 1874	111	R. remains physically drained, so the household shifts around his weakness while the writer seeks calm among the plants in the conservatory. Beneath the domestic routine lies the heavier burden of political and financial uncertainty, and the evening reading of Luther offers only a stern, austere kind of solace.	Friday, January 2: The night passed tolerably, but in the morning R. is very weak and in need of the utmost care. I take over the supervision of the house and settle myself in the conservatory both morning and afternoon. The plants have a very calming effect on me, but at home I find R. still weak and depressed. The uncertainty in which the King has left him absolutely oppresses him. In the evening we at last take up our Luther again; R. entirely approves of his strictness toward the members of the Reformed Church, if the mystery about which one really should not speak had to be formulated, then in this way.
January 3, 1874	109	The day moves between spiritual reflection and nervous wit, with a moving passage about Christ, a joke about “world asthma,” and R.’s sense that he is being kept alive by unreliable successes and royal favor. Even short walks leave him agitated, while the newspapers bring more signs of an unsettled public world.	Saturday, January 3: From Claudius’s Wandsbecker Bote R. reads me a passage about Christ which is really fine and moving. Our friend [Malwida] speaks of a child of Atma that has just been born, which leads to a witty remark from R. about world asthma. He goes for a walk, comes to me in the conservatory, but is still weak and agitated at the same time. “What am I living on?” he asks. “My operatic successes and the bounty of a King who does not want to understand me.” We read in the newspaper that the prince is having things in Versailles copied for himself. In the evening continued with Luther.
January 4, 1874	152	A restless household is interrupted by visitors and farewells, and the writer bears the strain of hosting alone while R. is unwell. Malwida’s uncertain health and possible departure deepen the melancholy, but the largest disappointment is professional: still no favorable decision, and the performances may have to be canceled.	Sunday, January 4: R. had a restless night and is indisposed. On top of this Prof. Overbeck pays us a visit, and I have to receive and look after him alone until R. joins us in the evening. The learned man makes a good impression on us, but he does not have particularly good news to tell of our friend Nietzsche’s health. In the morning I said goodbye to Malwida, who, constantly indisposed, wants to consult a doctor in Munich, to find out whether she should move to the south. Shall we see her again? The parting fills me with great melancholy. I give her a few lines for Councilor D. With indescribable feelings I see the days of this first week pass by without a favorable decision, which means that the orders cannot be placed and, in consequence, the year ’75 cannot be kept to. R. wants to announce the cancellation of the performances.
January 5, 1874	233	Exhaustion, fear, and money trouble compress the day into something almost unmanageable, and even ordinary hospitality feels like an effort against despair. Yet the evening reading and conversation still create flashes of intimacy, and R.’s reflection on life without her reveals how deeply they depend on one another.	Monday, January 5: R. again had a bad night, and I am literally afraid of being together with him; talking about the affair oppresses him as much as not talking about it. I see him literally succumbing, and there is nothing I can do! The “cloak of misery” has been donned again, God help us; and in addition there are material worries about my little bit of capital, which my mother still withholds from me, and the interest on it has not yet been paid to me. I do not get to the house in the morning, and for that reason my visit in the afternoon is all the longer. A strange task amid so much gloom and hopelessness, to wish to, or rather have to, make it comfortable. In the evening read Luther, then also in Claudius about the Last Supper, very fine, though he has not quite understood Luther either, and gives unity precedence over truthfulness. We laugh to think how disagreeable Luther must be to people of refinement. Splendid comparison of God with a printer: only in the life beyond shall we see the true text of life, here on earth the letters are the wrong way around. R. says that when he was walking through the Platz des Gymnasiums he had asked himself what his life would look like without me. All this absurdity, he says, this meaninglessness! Nothing to grasp hold of...
January 6, 1874	305	An early-morning discussion turns into a decisive shift: rather than keep pretending the project can continue as planned, they confront the need to abandon the performances and tell the truth to their supporters. The day is full of uneasy correspondence, family troubles, and ethical arguments about love and desire, but also a faint release as R. seems relieved to face reality.	Tuesday, January 6: At four in the morning R. comes to me, saying he cannot sleep; since I am also awake, we discuss a circular to the patrons, relating all our experiences, from the Wagner Societies in Vienna to the Crown Prince’s ignoring the theater during his visit, etc. (my father and our other friends), then the decision to abandon the performances entirely, since 1875 cannot be adhered to. R. cables Councilor D., saying he must be told yes or no. A difficult decision! But at breakfast R. seems downright relieved; he says at five o’clock he even wrote a verse: Since Germany won’t give us the means, I can’t let Hoffmann paint the scenes. We consider our position here and find it a difficult one. On top of that, Claire writes that my mother is again beset by a mania for spending. Malwida writes, Councilor D. cables, the King refuses to give the guarantee! In the afternoon to the theater. The problem: how to procure them, how to get money and at the same time not deceive the people. R. first sends a telegram to Heckel; he must be told the truth. The letter from M[alwida] pains us. R. says: “What one can be to others, that they are to oneself; I wish to be loved by this or that woman, want to exert an influence on her, that is really what love means. To engender beauty in another, says Diotima, that is to say, to fill the other with oneself. But to desire another at all costs, even when one is not loved oneself, that is a bestial feeling.” Read Luther. Went to our beds around midnight. The children, merry and cheerful, go sleighing. Feustel thought that if one had not been so intent on keeping to the deadline, one could have built for 30,000 florins less.
January 7, 1874	299	Although R. is still worn down, his mood lifts enough for him to rethink strategy and speak with some clarity about prudence, honesty, and survival. The couple’s emotional dependence becomes almost devotional, with thoughts of being deserted by everyone else and a wish to remain together even in death, while a small political opening offers a sliver of hope.	Wednesday, January 7: R. looks worn out, but had a better night. He says as he comes in to breakfast, “Now one must be many things at the same time - cautious, prudent, truthful, and noble.” He says the experience with Erlanger knocked the bottom out of the barrel entirely. Yesterday he said how low his spirits had sunk when he had looked through the army lists and seen all the French terminology in it. “We are barbarians,” he said, wholly in Luther’s sense of being both “uncultivated and un-German.” At breakfast he says, “You’ll be hearing Der Ring des Nibelungen after all.” He has the idea of not setting any deadline, but simply saying that if 200,000 are available, well and good - but do not imagine it will come along of its own accord. Letter from Councilor D., confirming his telegram. In the evening, impelled by I know not what, I say to R., “But how lovely it is, to be deserted by everybody!” R. grasps this exclamation eagerly and says, “Oh, yes, it is the only worthy state to be in.” Yesterday and today I put my whole being into a prayer: to die at the same time as Richard! To wander this earth only so long as my gaze can meet his, my hand hold his, my poor spirit look upon and grasp his spirit! R., to whom I state this quite simply, replies, “We shall go on living together for a long time yet.” Letter from Bucher, saying that the Prince has indeed read the pamphlet and given it to his minister Delbrück for an appraisal. It seems not entirely impossible that he will take over the guarantee, as I had requested, overcoming my great repugnance against making any appeal to my friends. In the evening friend Luther!
January 8, 1874	452	News arrives that the King’s anger over a humiliating poem may have helped sink the guarantee, and the friends immediately start improvising damage control. The day swings between practical schemes, legal anxieties, and domestic embarrassment, yet the repeated vexations also sharpen the couple’s awareness of how completely they stand by each other.	Thursday, January 8: Hans’s birthday - house affairs, in the afternoon Heckel, joined in the evening by Feustel; we learn only now what Councilor D. told Feustel back in December - that the King was incensed with R. because he had not set Herr Dahn’s hymn to the King to music; Herr Dahn had sent R.’s letter to him to the King, and the latter was very incensed by it and had in consequence refused the guarantee!!! It is confirmed that the subscription has brought in nothing. R. is requested by our friends not to make any public statement, but first to try to wipe out the debts by means of concerts (!!); the report of the management committee would then follow, and after that R. could make his statement. Heckel should approach Herr Wesendonck, taking up his proposal again (signatures and payments, until everything is signed), then approach the Grand Duke of Baden, asking him to form a consortium of princes, which should then issue an appeal to the Reich. Friday, January 9: R. writes to the King about the F. Dahn affair. Incidentally, Dahn has taken it badly that R. cannot find the leisure to read his volume of poems now, though R. has told him it is bound in his library, so that he can read it when opportunity arises. To the King he writes that, if his royal benefactor requires music from him, he hopes he will allow R. to write his own verses for it; also that he did not pay any particular attention to Herr Dahn’s poem, since he gets scores of such requests, and anyway he could have found no melody suitable for such an archaic verse meter. At the same time he told the King of his decision to abandon the performances. This all took place after our good friend Heckel had left. The lawyer sends my payments, but nothing is said about my capital! In the evening great embarrassment with regard to the house; the question of how to deal with these people is very important - if one just follows one’s heart, as we do, one experiences terrible misunderstandings, and yet one cannot act against one’s own nature. Everything ridiculously unpleasant we now call Felix Dahn. When one considers that the granting of a guarantee hangs from a thread such as this, what an insight one gets into the ridiculousness of this world! The one good thing about it is that with every vexation, every trial, R. and I become even more deeply aware of what we mean to each other. Visit from the dean with Captain v. Volmar - R. unfortunately becomes heated, since the gentleman talks to him about the performances of Die Walküre in Munich.
January 10, 1874	160	The conservatory offers a rare sanctuary, and the writer takes deep comfort in the living green while the house itself remains cold and difficult. R.’s tenderness toward the children and his talk of Nordic life and nature soften the day, but the evening reading returns them to the sorrow of mortality and family loss.	Saturday, January 10: Wrote in the conservatory, in brilliant sunshine, an indescribably comforting spot - no book in the world could, I think, have such a good effect as these green leaves stretching out soothingly and caressingly toward me. Today R. cut Loldi’s toenails! And says: “I so much enjoy doing such things for a child.” Yesterday he took Fidi for a walk, then to Angermann’s for beer and pretzels. One day the children will doubtless remember his heavenly kindness and love, which they will not encounter again in life. When I tell him about my delight in the conservatory, he says: “Yes, that is our joy in Nature - we Nordic people live as if in a prison; one has the whole of Nature on a free person.” The house is very cold. The three elder children do a lot of skating. In the evening Luther - the death of his little daughter, at which the heart rejoices, but the flesh grieves.
January 11, 1874	319	Conversation drifts toward grand political and artistic possibilities, with the couple imagining what a more fitting ruler might have done for German culture. Yet the mood is not purely theoretical: a child’s spontaneous remark breaks them into laughter, domestic tensions simmer, and R.’s recovery brings only temporary relief before the household’s recurring troubles reassert themselves.	Sunday, January 11: After our reading yesterday our conversation turned to the task which could have been assigned to the King of Bavaria; since the whole political burden is being carried by the German Emperor, he, as virtual founder of the Reich, could have devoted himself undisturbed to establishing a temple for German art. R. said one could expect things only from princes who had not been brought up as heirs to the throne and future monarchs, such as the present Emperor Wilhelm, the Grand Duke of Baden, and the first King of Bavaria - Frederick the Great and the earlier kings had certainly been exceptions. From Freytag he reads me the curious and significant story of Helmbrecht - and curses the Renaissance, which undermined the German character. Fidi surprises us after lunch: R. and I were talking (I no longer know in what connection) about Germany’s being colder, whereupon Fidi interposed, “But in Spain it is fine” - undoubtedly a memory of the frequently recurring quotation from Don Giovanni - it made us laugh heartily. R. is going through the score for the second act. A telegram from Minna Standhartner, saying my father has just been playing in Vienna (for the Franz Joseph Foundation), “storms of applause,” which strikes us as strange! In the evening Luther - bury our friend, from whom we have gained the knowledge of how the German people adopted Christianity. In the conservatory, I wrote to Richter regarding Vienna and a possible concert there - oh, misery! Thank God R. is now in good health. Our various domestic disasters wring from him the exclamation: “Devil take all women! You are the only one who, when her vanity was wounded, did not turn everything upside down and cause indescribable chaos and unrest.” In the course of our conversation he recalls Paganini and his daemon, and says that in comparison Herr Joachim and his consorts could hide their heads in shame.
January 12, 1874	162	The day is divided between memories of past hardship, the demands of the unfinished house, and a quiet return to Werther that leaves the writer deeply stirred. R’s teasing presence lightens the evening, while his work on the biography and the blue ink he gives her underline how closely their daily lives and intellectual interests remain intertwined.	Monday, January 12: Memories of earlier days and sufferings, for which R. pities me, as if he had not suffered and borne just as much! My day, both before and after lunch, is given over to the new house, where there are still many troubles. In the scant moments left to me I read Werthers Leiden in the old edition, and am greatly moved once again by the tenderness of the emotions. R. laughs when he sees me reading with such concentration a few minutes before supper, and he offers to read it with me afterward. I start with the letter of May 22, with the dreaming resignation! R. says it is the world outlook which is important in Werther, not the novel itself. R. has had some dealings with Bonfantini, the printer, and in consequence is making some corrections in the biography. “In business matters I like dealing with Frenchmen, but not when ideas are involved.” Today blue ink, a gift from R.
January 13, 1874	206	The thaw keeps her indoors as R. labors over the biography and grows more bitter about Paris, politics, and the parliamentary scene. Their reading moves restlessly from Holderlin to the Upanishads, but the real evening drama is their shared irritation with vanity, public life, and the limits of what certain writers can truly move them.	Tuesday, January 13: The thaw has begun, and I am constantly in the house, morning and afternoon. R. continues with his corrections in the biography. The sojourn in Paris seems to him ever more gruesome: “Oh, how fine it all was!” Regarding the absurd elections, he tells me that in Chemnitz they have elected a Socialist, or whatever these people are called, who is not even allowed to enter the city. And how did this come about? Because five or six thousand people abstained from voting. “Oh, this Parliament!” R. exclaims. “If only I could have a few words with Bismarck about it!” In Bavaria they seem to have voted mainly along Catholic lines. In the evening I read some Hölderlin, but mainly Schiller and Goethe about him, for he himself does not much appeal to us; his letters to Schiller remind me of various letters to R. (Herrig, Stade, Fuchs, etc.), always occupied with themselves. R. continues reading Freytag and feels he has a good idea when he explains the fatal division between countryfolk and educated people as being due to the influence of Latin scholarship. Since Hölderlin does not grip us, we read Colebrooke's Essay on the Vedas and come upon the extracts from the Upanishads.
January 14, 1874	494	With the thaw advanced, she busies herself with the house, the garden, and the painter while R. continues his corrections and toys with enlarging the Idyll in a way she resists. The children bring warmth, but the day's deepest energy comes from long conversations with R. about love, masculinity, and the strange force of the Upanishads and Richard III.	Wednesday, January 14: The thaw is even more intense, but it is possible to go to the house. I discussed with the gardener all kinds of things to be planted, then went through all the decorations again with Maurer, the painter. I find R. still working on his corrections. He tells me he has been thinking of doing the Idyll for a large orchestra, but it would not do so well; I tell him I should be appalled to see this work handed over to the general public. Much joy in Fidi, who is high-spirited, healthy, amusing, and affectionate toward us. With R. to the house, we talk of men and women and love. I tell him he is the only man who deserves the love of a woman, because he is faithful and tender, he believes in love. R. replies: “Most men lack composure. That makes them cynical.” In the evening I read the Upanishads; I feel that no one who has not worked through the philosophy of Schopenhauer would be able to understand their secrets, and I see why our brother-in-law Brockhaus spoke of “some insane Brahman who wrote this thing.” Salvation and pleasure as opposites, that strikes one like lightning. The heart's composure as prerequisite for the attainment of the spirit. The death of death attained by him who here sees a difference. Death created consciousness because of its desire to be infused with spirit. The creation of the first divine being divides into two, unfolds above the king, and through it the weak dominate the stronger. The imperishable nature of nourishment, wonderful chapter, the son as propitiator. I cannot note down here everything which grips me, particularly as interpreted to me by R. We talk about the divine wisdom of these people who, in order to express something which cannot really be expressed in words, like, for example, that reason stands above the heart, yet without a turbulent heart genuine reason is not attained, though a turbulent heart by itself is evil, invented all these gradations, Atma, Purusha, the endless subdivisions. Through this wisdom they really have succeeded in building a religion on abstract conceptions which an ordinary person can never hope to understand. We cannot read much of it at a time. And after a short pause, led there by the winter of our discontent, we pick up Richard III and cannot get away from it, not even in our conversation! Among other things that interjection, “Margaret.” “Richard!” “Ha!” is one of those lightning flashes which sharply emphasize the truthfulness of a scene, while making the poet himself even more invisibly elusive. What was he like, this incredible man before whose might all must vanish? What other poet of any place or time would ever have permitted his hero constantly to supply the program of his actions without making us lose our belief in him? But here one believes it all: thus it was, thus were they. We once again feel completely overwhelmed.
January 15, 1874	385	The morning begins with tenderness from R., yet the day quickly turns into a tangle of practical worries, moral discomfort, and the burdens of property and work. Her encounter with the old woman leaves her ashamed and self-reproachful, while the evening returns them to books even as construction problems and bad water continue to press on them both.	Thursday, January 15: “You set a crown on me with your tenderness,” R. says to me early in the morning. “You are the crown not only of my life, but of the whole world as well.” Alas, and I can do nothing for him! He writes Heckel a letter for the Grand Duke of Baden and says, “One does this, but one has no faith, no belief in it all, one does it just so as to have left nothing untried.” At lunch he tells me he dreamed about Emperor Wilhelm, that the Emperor was very friendly toward him, and when R., touched, thanked him in extravagant terms, he reproved him with the remark, “None of this twaddle,” to which R. replied in some consternation; but the Emperor throughout amiable and kind. Walked to the house. As I am leaving to return home, an old woman stops me and asks whether she may walk across the building site. It was late, Fidi had wet feet, I tried to make her understand that she would gain nothing by walking through, but she was deaf; she went on her way, leaving me with remorse enveloping me like a shadow. Why had I not done as she asked, even if she was mistaken? She did not understand me and must have had bitter feelings about possessions and lack of possessions. Even wearier than she, I dragged myself home, cursing my prudence and my complacency, but above all my suspiciousness. I have no excuse, and feel I should like to atone for it. In the evening, the Upanishads and Richard III. Before this R. suffered more vexation: the water for the second fountain, dug with great difficulty, turns out to be bad. Friday, January 16: R. is not well, though the weather has improved. He has too many worries churning around inside him. Both of us in the house in the morning, positioning the Hildebrand water colors. In the afternoon as well, while the children are skating. Fidi, given two pieces of gingerbread there, hands the larger piece to Eva, then gets into a rage about it: “I always have to do that, so that people will say something!” R. copies out his letter to friend Heckel. In the evening continued Richard III and finished the Upanishads. Found Schopenhauer's dream theory in it.
January 17, 1874	428	R. wakes from a night of unsettling dreams and seems worn down by accumulating annoyances, from correspondence mishandled to the failure of the second fountain's water. She finds brief consolation in the blooming cyclamen and in the children skating, but R.’s mood remains strained until their reading and conversation draw them back into shared thought.	Saturday, January 17: R. had a bad night with wild dreams, among others that Frau Wesendonck showed him a newborn child, remarking that in her case this does not cease; then, with the utmost naivete, she gave the child the breast; it had a curious decoration on its head and looked precocious, making R. think it had white hair. “How naive people are here!” R. said. Then a great, powerful hawk attacked the mother and child, R. drove it off, but it kept swooping down on them again. Then he woke up. After that he met me in the street in Paris, dressed in black and looking very pale and sad, and he wanted to take me home. “But, my God, Minna is still alive, she'll again say she has nothing in the oven. A stop must be put to this nonsense.” In silence we had then started on our way, losing ourselves in the streets, which became more and more confusing. Yesterday I took delight in a budding cyclamen; I had given the little pot to Malwida, she went away, now the little plant is putting forth its blossoms. It is not as little children I should like to be, but as plants, soundlessly inhaling elements poisonous to mankind, soundlessly exhaling balm, silently giving joy, silently fading, striving toward the light, stretching out protecting arms. When I tell R. about the blossoming cyclamen, he says: “Yes, you are still grateful, you have this gift, or you are still so young that you can take pleasure in something amid all this vexation. I cannot.” The children skating very prettily. On his return home R. finds a letter from our good Heckel, who did not write to Herr Wesendonck as had been decided here: instead of returning to this gentleman's proposal, he made him another one, which Herr W. has of course turned down. That's how it is, everyone thinks he knows. R. laughs a lot when I tell him that in this matter one requires not the faith of an infidel, but the patience of a Christian. In the evening the composure of the Upanishads is thus miraculously attained, and on this composure a ringing delight floats as on clear, still water. Here is brahman, devoutness achieved, this is nonexistence and one is close to the All-Seeing. When I spoke of the purity and chastity of this music, R. says, “Yes, it is German, and that was his foundation; it also occurs in Mozart, though his true foundation was the ingratiating art of Italian opera.” A passage based on untranslatable word play omitted.
January 18, 1874	150	The day is dominated by debt, disappointment, and the bitter irony of public success arriving just as private finances remain desperate. R. is ill-tempered and agitated, lashing out through satire and politics, while she tries to keep him from sending off one more cutting gesture to the world.	Sunday, January 18: R. had a bad night: “If only one had the strength not to keep thinking about it!” It is thoroughly depressing that a debt of 25,000 florins still remains. How ironic all the news which keeps coming in: Wagner concerts in London, success of Die Meistersinger in Cologne, requests for autographs, etc.! R. thinks of presenting the theater to the town, so as to be able to raise a mortgage on it. Visit from the mayor; the shock of the elections: Germany in no way suitable for a general franchise. The good people, satisfied with the government, abstain, and only the bad are active, Jews, Catholics, Socialists. R. is not well, consequently in a very angry mood. In this spirit he works out a poem on pâté de foie gras, which he wants to give Herr Feustel for his birthday. I beg him not to send the poem.
January 19, 1874	145	She spends much of the day on practical domestic matters, from choosing carpets and curtains to following up on failed arrangements in Vienna, while R. finishes Richard III with evident excitement. The book's grim force and the echoes of imperial violence give their evening reading a darker historical resonance than the ordinary errands around it.	Monday, January 19: Yesterday evening I read by myself the 12 anonymous letters of an aesthetic heretic; thoroughly healthy views, yet one does not really understand why the author felt the need to express them, and anyway it is all taken from Beethoven and Art and Politics, though lacking the philosophical basis. In the conservatory, a few untranslatable words omitted. Chose carpets and curtains. Letter from Richter: he has not been able to arrange anything in Vienna. In the evening we begin a book about India by a missionary from Basel. Richard finishes Richard III, great pleasure in his address to his troops. In him Shakespeare shows us the last convulsions of Norman power; but for the dream apparitions he would appear undefeated, unpunished; he does not care about his life, and is convinced of his right to the crown over such weaklings as Edward and Clarence.
January 20, 1874	143	A lively exchange about nationality and marriage gives way to the happiest news of the day: R. is orchestrating the second act. The spring weather and the sounds in the garden brighten the atmosphere, but the visitor and the book on India also remind them how much ideological confusion and religious weakness surround them.	Tuesday, January 20: “Whoever acknowledges no nation as his own might just as well not have been born.” “I am one of them,” I say laughing. “A woman takes the nationality of her husband; men have always taken foreign wives, who are designed, like birds, to carry the seed hither and thither. A woman follows her love, if she loves a German man, she is German.” R. is orchestrating the 2nd act, this the best news of the day! Utterly springlike today, starlings twittering in the palace gardens. In the evening continued reading the book on India. Before that, a visit from the dean, who strangely enough is expecting Bishop Ketteler to found the German national church. The Protestant clergy are said to have voted almost wholly for the Catholic party, and from the womb of this fragile, desiccated church nothing more can be expected.
January 21, 1874	179	The birthday gift of pate de foie gras becomes a small moral drama, and both of them swear off it in disgust, while she is held at home by eye trouble and restless with the wish to shape her children well. R. reads to them and plays Beethoven, and the music stirs in her a sense of maternity, inward force, and the pressure of a life that wants to break beyond its vessel.	Wednesday, January 21: Herr Feustel's birthday; I send the children to his house with the pâté de foie gras, in connection with which R. and I vow never to touch this ingenious product of human cruelty. R. works. I write to Dr. Standhartner regarding the concert in Vienna. Eye troubles chain me to the house and idleness. In the evening I ask R. to read the text of Der Fliegende Holländer to the children, Daniella and Blandine, which he kindly does. My anxious desire to plant or cultivate the noble seed in my children grows daily. R. plays passages from Beethoven's Quartet, Opus [left blank], my favorite, and when I think about the effect such music has on me, I come to the conclusion that it is exactly like the feeling a mother has when the child first stirs in her womb, the movement of Eternity in her heart, the source of all things, usually silent, unmoving, resounds and stirs. I have the feeling that, just as the root shatters the earthen vessel, my existence, too, must yield to this striving.
January 22, 1874	87	R. works, makes a dutiful visit, and returns depressed by the coldness and business-mindedness he encountered, with the building debt still hanging over them. The news of Professor Ott's suicide deepens the gloom, and their evening reading leaves them both impatient with outsiders who treat serious matters as mere curiosities.	Thursday, January 22: R. works and in the afternoon goes to Herr Feustel to congratulate him, returns home in gloomy spirits, and would prefer not to talk at all. He finds great indifference prevailing there and a purely business attitude. 30,000 florins are still said to be owing on the building. Shocking news of the suicide of Prof. Ott. In the evening continued reading the missionary's book; R. deplores the fact that only people who are not qualified to do so deal with these matters, treating them like curiosities.
January 23, 1874	79	News of a new American edition of Beethoven and the scattered gifts from supporters in several cities lifts the household slightly, though the sum still feels painfully inadequate against the scale of what is needed. The evening spent on India gives the day a quieter, inward close, like a momentary reprieve from practical anxieties.	Friday, January 23: In America, a second edition of Beethoven is being published, and it is described there as one of the most significant books of our time, a very remarkable sign! The people in New York also send 2,000 thalers, the people in Vienna 600, Lenbach 300, and Antonie Petersen five pounds, in all about 3,000 thalers. All the same, next to nothing when one thinks what is needed. In the evening still occupied with India, a real spiritual release.
January 24, 1874	134	At last the long-delayed royalties from Berlin arrive, confirming that his work brings in the strongest returns, even if the payment comes grudgingly and too late. Her own inability to read or write because of eye trouble makes the evening reading fall to him, and their conversation turns affectionate and intimate as he dreams up new overtures and she feels how completely their lives are bound together.	Saturday, January 24: The long-awaited royalties from Berlin arrive at last; it seems Herr von Hülsen always sends them with chagrin, and R. must always cable for them. For this quarter they amount to 1,400 thalers, and show that R.'s works produce the biggest receipts. Eye trouble keeps me from writing or reading, and R. takes over the evening reading. After it we converse until nearly midnight. “I have what I want,” he says, “you content, all the rest I let slide.” Today he hit upon the idea of suggesting to Schott six overtures, which he intends to write starting next year, against an advance of 10,000 florins. Once before he promised me to write these overtures, “Lohengrin's Ocean Voyage,” “Tristan the Hero,” and “Dirge for Romeo and Juliet.” The others he does not yet know.
January 25, 1874	112	The children are sobered by attending a funeral, while professional news from Hoffmann adds more uncertainty and questions about commissions. She admires R. for remaining buoyant under pressure, and their shared walk and evening study give the day a gentler tone, with the landscape and their companionship briefly outweighing the surrounding strain.	Sunday, January 25: The children attend the funeral of poor Prof. Ott and are very solemnly impressed by it. Prof. Hoffmann writes that people are jamming his studio to see the sketches. He also asks about the commission for them. How and what is one to reply? I have to admire R. for remaining so cheerful amid all the depressing worry and uncertainty. He keeps telling me that it is I who keep him on his feet, which always makes me want to say an Ave Maria! We go for a walk together, the avenue leading to the Eremitage, delight in the pretty scenery, much peace and merriment in the fields. In the evening, India.
January 26, 1874	133	Translations, letters, and reports of success from abroad give her a sense that his work is beginning to travel, yet the triumphs still seem remote from their immediate life and finances. Amid reflections on religion and culture, the day ends in laughter as he reads Aristophanes, leaving her with a brighter, more playful feeling than the news earlier in the day suggested.	Monday, January 26: English translation of Das Rheingold and Siegfried; soon the whole Ring will appear (Alfred Forman). Letter from Malwida in San Remo: she was ill, but is now enjoying the south. “I thank God for every bright cloud I see here,” and R. observes it is just a matter of degree; the poetic spirit will be awakened just as much here as down there. The gemstone flashes but faintly, nevertheless it flashes! Repeated news from Cologne: Die Meistersinger seems to be a great success there, the only sad thing is that this success means nothing to us! The Indians in the evening penetrated further, and saw that Buddhism was the fulfillment of Brahmanism, the first directed toward pure knowledge, the latter toward ethics. To end with, R. reads me some of Aristophanes's Lysistrata, great fun.
January 27, 1874	238	A friendly letter from the King stirs hope, but it does not settle the larger question of whether the guarantee will finally be granted, so uncertainty remains in the background. She and R. move between political worries, thoughts of the people who have drifted away from him, and the force of his music, which she sees as one of his richest achievements; his declaration that he has her is the emotional center of the day.	Tuesday, January 27: Went to the house early; when I return home, R. shows me a letter from the King which he did not wish to read, and I should tell him what it contains. I see at once that it is very friendly. The King promises never to give up his mission in life, and says the delay was forced on him only by the state of his purse. He treats Prof. Dahn's poem as sycophancy and knows that R. has better things to do than to embellish such verses. But still we are left in uncertainty, will he grant the guarantee or will he not? Heckel has forwarded the letter to the Grand Duke of Baden. In the evening made more progress with the new Brahmanism. Before our reading we talked about the people who had all drifted away from him, such as the Brockhauses, Karl Ritter, the Willes, Laube, a vast number R. can trace throughout his life. I tell him he can also say, of his Ring des Nibelungen, “Those who listened to the first songs no longer hear the last!” He replies: “I don't care much about that. For me these people have passed away before they have actually died, and I have what I want: you!” Today he played the end of the second act, the richest, most varied piece of work he has perhaps ever written, and the most acute in its dramatic accents.
January 28, 1874	245	The household is suspended between anticipation and fear as they wait to learn whether the project is postponed or secured, and she spends the day trying not to intensify his anxiety. Around that tension, the evening brings restless intellectual talk, a glimpse of his cheerful side in conversation with a peasant woman, and her own private stillness in the moonlit conservatory.	Wednesday, January 28: The question which was this morning whether the whole undertaking has been indefinitely postponed, or whether, relying on the King's letter of yesterday, he should count on the guarantee. While I am paying some calls he makes up his mind, but I do not dare ask him in what direction; I am just glad to distract him a little, if it lies in my power. Over coffee we come once more to the subject of the icebergs which have melted in the sea of inferiority, among them K. Ritter. R. maintains that it was the Judaism article which destroyed him, as it did poor Tausig, for he had Jewish blood in his veins. R. takes a long walk, goes out to the theater, and there meets a peasant woman, with whom he has a cheerful conversation. He talks to her about the long, poor path she has before her on the way back to her village. “My dear sir, if you've had to walk it every day for 30 years, you stop thinking about whether it's good or bad.” In the evening, after we had read some more of the Basel book, R. wanted to read me Aristophanes, but it was impossible, there is too much licentiousness, in which women can take no part. While R. was out walking, I sat for a long time in the moonlight in the conservatory, quite unable to take my leave of the gentle rays and the great stillness.
January 29, 1874	311	While she watches the children on the ice and he works on the second act, the practical world advances with promises of money and news that the necessary guarantee may finally make everything possible. Yet the day is not only public and financial; a careless remark from Daniella pierces her deeply, leaving her shaken, ashamed, and resolved to hold herself together for both the child’s sake and R.'s peace of mind.	Thursday, January 29: Spent the whole morning walking in the palace gardens, keeping an eye on the children on the ice. R. works on his second act. After lunch he goes to see Herr Feustel, who cannot understand the King's remarks about the Dahn poem, since in Councillor Diiflipp's office he had seen telegrams from Eisenhart, the secretary, reporting that the King was feeling extremely ungracious toward R.! The bank in Coburg is prepared to advance 50,000 florins on the spot once the guarantee is given! Well, at least the men have now been paid 10,000 florins. In the newspaper we read as a piece of literary and theatrical news that Laube and Dingelstedt have now been reconciled after an estrangement of many years, and that as a result, Parts One and Two are to be performed (with stage design by Makart, etc.) over six days. I have to laugh over these miserable people. Of Faust R. says: “Such works tower like sphinxes over our incompetent culture. The German drama is past rescue, the opportunity was missed, now music has taken over and swept everything away.” Today it was also my lot to be put to a fearful test. When the two elder children came upstairs to say good night, I joked with Blandinchen about coming times. As the children leave, I notice that Daniella is saying something and call Blandinchen back to ask about it. “How boring,” is what she had said about my joke! R. horrified, I preserving silence, bidding my soul to be calm, and in this calmness stammering a prayer of submission. All I can do here is accept. With distress I now realize that blame lies not in my divorce from Hans, but in my marriage to him. God, for my punishment, resolve not to let the cheerfulness fade which is so vital to R.; holding back my tears, praying!
January 30, 1874	435	She remains wounded by the previous day’s remark, but tries to respond to Daniella with restraint and moral clarity rather than punishment or bitterness. The entry is shaped by inward struggle: she sees her suffering as something to be borne before God, while letters and a social visit carry on around her, and Schott’s tentative interest offers a small practical encouragement at the end.	Friday, January 30: I find it difficult to speak to R. about anything except what happened yesterday! But I do not let my sorrow show. Daniella, returning from school, wants to beg my pardon for having so offended me, but I reply that she does not have to beg my pardon, since she had not offended me; I told her that when she misbehaved, lied, or was impertinent, I should continue as before to punish her; but when, after a day spent in harmony, she makes such a remark about an affectionate little joke addressed to her sister, I could make no punishment, no reproach, for me it had been a revelation, and on this level I could only commune with God, who bestows both blessings and curses. I allow her to work beside me, treat her as usual, and bear no bitter feelings against my lot, no grudge against my child, and believe I have thus achieved understanding. R. wants her to be sent away, but I fight against this, for I believe that despite everything she is happier here than anywhere else and that the good aspects of her character will be brought out better. If in my heart I am sorrowful and if I humbly bear this pain, perhaps I shall not be denied the blessing of seeing my child become a good person; and the fact that my way of doing things remains a mystery to her is of course of no importance to her. Letter from my father; he says that the wreath presented to him by the Wagner Society at his appearance in Vienna had aroused mixed feelings in him, he tells himself that there is nothing better he can do than place his fingers at the disposal of the Wagner Societies. Yesterday Marie Schleinitz wrote in a very chastened spirit, saying that the mood in Berlin was so depressed that she expected nothing from the petition to the Emperor. She also tells us that Hans and Dohm had been in Meiningen at the same time, as guests of Frau von Heldburg, and that Hans had been in splendid spirits and had professed himself extremely satisfied with his success and his earnings in London. May his children bring him joy! Walk with R., Fidi, and Eva, snow flurries. I feel unwell, as if my heart is being suffocated, but I manage to keep control over myself, and praise God for silence! In the evening with R. to Frau Gross's for a housewarming. Earlier a letter from Herr Schott, who seems, apart from a few ifs and buts, to be interested in R.'s suggestion.
January 31, 1874	111	R. is pleased with his letter to Schott and the promise it seems to hold, and the family has a quieter outing together in the afternoon. In the evening, though her eyes are still weak, she listens as he ranges from Plato to Indian thought, turning the day into a meditation on art, philosophy, and the different ways truth can be approached.	Saturday, January 31: R. writes to Herr Schott and is pleased with the success of his scheme. Outing with the children in the afternoon. In the house the first of the Hildebrand watercolors has now been put up. In the evening, my eyes are still weak, R. starts to read Timaeus, but he soon gives up, since, as he remarks, it is not profound metaphysics but artistry that one expects from the Greeks, and in Plato it is the artist and not the philosopher who enchants us. Behind all the fantasies of the Indians there lies a deep philosophy; in them it seems that proper knowledge can only be won through these fantasies.
No diary entries found.