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 1878 (31 total)

Date	Word Count	Subject	Content
January 1, 1878	66	Richard spends New Year’s Day hard at work and jokes that the world is unusually quiet, with no bad news reaching him. After social calls to the Feustels and the mayor, the evening ends with Dante and a cordial exchange of letters with the King’s new secretary.	Tuesday, January 1: “The sinful world is keeping me busy,” says R. He is working today, as every day, and says laughingly that I must have told everyone to spare him, since nobody is bringing him any bad news. We drive out to the Feustels’ and the mayor’s. In the evening Dante’s Divina commedia. Very nice letter from the King’s new secretary, to which R. replies cordially.
January 2, 1878	176	Richard is buoyant and deeply satisfied with his work, describing himself as happily absorbed in an inner spiritual world. The day also brings admiration for Parsifal from Count Apponyi, strain from a troubling letter by Hans von Bülow, and an evening of exalted reading and music that leaves the diarist overwhelmed.	Wednesday, January 2: R. works and makes me happy at lunch with the remark, “I am enjoying my life tremendously, I am immersing myself more and more in my world of spirits, the whole day is taken up with their rhythms and fluctuations,” etc. “I am a lucky man,” he tells me in the evening. Oh, God, oh, heavens, what have I done to deserve the happiness of seeing him so contented? From Count Apponyi a wonderful letter about Parsifal, which Richard calls sublime. A very trying one for me from Hans von Bülow, which I answer at once. Herr von Wolzogen reads us his circular letter, written in R.’s name to the local Wagner Societies. In the evening the Divina commedia and the 8th Symphony, of whose concluding movement R. says that for him it is the finest thing Beethoven ever produced, a celebration of life and all that it means, divine! To end the day he plays and sings to me Die sündige Welt how overwhelming it is, how incomparably beautiful! What can one possibly say?
January 3, 1878	127	Richard continues working despite feeling unwell, and the diarist worries over a strange lingering symptom. At lunch he recounts an early childhood memory of begging for music paper, while the household also hears encouraging news about the Society of Patrons and ends the evening with lighter reading because he is too tired for Dante.	Thursday, January 3: R. working! He does not feel entirely well, has a curious taste of sour milk in his mouth which will not go away; I hope it is nothing, but I am worried. At lunch he tells us how he asked his mother for money to buy his first music paper, in order to copy out “Tittow’s Wilde Jagd.” She gave him the money grudgingly at first, but was then quite moved when she saw his first notes! The news coming to Herr von Wolzogen from all quarters concerning the organization of the Society of Patrons sounds quite good. I spend the morning arranging the library. In the evening the history of the Arabs once more, since R. feels too worn out to read the Divina commedia.
January 4, 1878	187	A comic dream about illness gives way to a restored, energetic Richard, who works, strolls in the palace gardens, and entertains the table with a mischievous story from childhood. The evening returns to Dante, though he recoils from the poem’s imagined world, and he closes the day with a weary remark about the difficulty of earning life’s daily bread.	Friday, January 4: R. dreamed that I was in tears and embraced him, because he was ill! It makes us laugh that this was the best dream he could think up for himself! He works, is feeling well again, tells us at lunch how as a child he once swindled the parson out of half of his confession money, having spent it on cream puffs! When he fell out with his mother, he pretended he wanted to go to confession, and was then given the money! A walk with him in the palace gardens. Then he goes to work again; when I come down to see him, he says, “You come right on a middle voice, a difficult middle voice!” In the evening the Divina commedia again; despite his admiration for the poet, he feels great repugnance for the subject of the poet’s imagination. As we go off to bed, he says he is having difficulty in baking life’s daily bread. Yesterday a very nice letter (reply) from the King’s new secretary. Yesterday, too, Herr von Wolzogen read us his circular, written in R.’s name to the local Societies.
January 5, 1878	177	Richard shares new music from Parsifal, including Titurel’s melancholy appeal, and is in exuberant spirits while the diarist remains deeply moved by what she hears. The day also includes library work and discussion of the patrons’ society before she spends a long, dutiful evening escorting Lusch to her first ball.	Saturday, January 5: Once again R. dreamed the thoughts which gave me a sleepless night! He works and, around noon, calls me in order to play me the conclusion of the entrance of the Knights of the Grail and Titurel’s wonderfully melancholic appeal. “I have spoiled things for the spa orchestras,” he says with a laugh; “my entrance ends without ‘suffering’!” I am still overwhelmed by my impressions, while he, seeming to be swimming in his element, enlivens our lunch table with his high spirits. He gives me the “Schmerzensblatt”! I then tell him how this morning Herr v. W. and I began to arrange the library; then we discuss Herr v. W.’s work with the patrons. “It was time,” says R., “that I was allowed for once to write a work under such good auspices.” At 7 o’clock I leave him to take Lusch to her first ball, returning home at 3:30 a.m.! I decide to make up for the boredom of this most frivolous of duties by not showing any signs of weariness at home, and on
January 6, 1878	246	Richard, affectionate after the previous night, spends the day on an essay for the Bayreuther Blatter while the diarist continues library work with Wolzogen. Lunch turns into an indignant discussion of an unauthorized Walküre performance in Schwerin, and the evening mixes reading, reflections on politics and religion, and a pleasing letter about Parsifal.	Sunday, January 6: I get up at my usual time. R. tells me that he waited up for me until 1:30 a.m.! Very early in the morning I felt his hand groping to see that I was there. During the evening he had read an article by Pohl with the Wolzogens and had looked through his “Fantasie” again. Today he works on his essay for the Bayreuther Blätter, which will soon be published. He told me that, if he had not invited Herr v. W. to settle here, nothing would have induced him to say a single word more. I arrange the library with Herr v. W. At lunch R. says, “I propose a toast—nobody will guess to what.” We ask him. “Today is the first performance of Die Walküre in Schwerin!” He talks very indignantly about this affair, which really is iniquitous. He paid Herr Hill 7,000 marks, and as a reward for releasing him they demand Die Walküre—but R. had only meant the right to perform it! I do not remember how we came to speak of the Venetians, but R. said, “Excellent statesmen, but completely heartless human beings: nothing can be more alien to what one calls religion than a state.” In the evening, the history of the Arabs, an unpoetical, unsympathetic, yet noble people. Nice letter from friend Schuré about Parsifal. R. takes pleasure in the ideas and the nice drawings in the Fliegende Blätter, he says it is still a truly German periodical.
January 7, 1878	155	The day opens with joking conversation and continues with steady work: the diarist and Wolzogen finish another section of the library while Richard presses on with his essay. Their exchanges repeatedly return to the feeling that his art arises naturally from the soul, and the evening closes with gratitude, darkly affectionate banter, and scenes from Coriolanus.	Monday, January 7: Coming from his bath, R. says to me: “You are quite right—we should have slaves” (I declared recently that slaves had been happier than the present-day proletariat), “but who should be the first slave? Ross or Georg?” We laugh heartily. I continue arranging the books with Herr v. W., and we finish the first section. R. works on his essay. When I told R. yesterday that if he was not in the mood to write it, he should drop it, he replied, “Oh, I can’t be such a weakling.” I: “The weakness which is creating Parsifal.” He: “What comes pouring out of one’s soul can’t be described as work.” I spoke to Herr v. W. about the Society of Patrons, and afterward R. says to me: “You turn my life into a real blessing. When shall we go down to our graves?” “Whenever you like,” I reply! In the evening scenes from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
January 8, 1878	122	Richard completes his article for the Bayreuther Blatter and remains cheerful throughout the day, even turning an errand into a moonlit reunion with the diarist. That evening he reads his introduction aloud with stern self-awareness, while an unsettling packet of Hans’s letters casts a shadow over the household.	Tuesday, January 8: R. finishes his article for the Bayreuther Blätter. He is well and in good spirits. I have to pay some calls with Lusch, R. comes to meet me, an old lady sees him by the school and calls out to him, “Your dear wife went that way.” He turns into the road to find me, but since I am paying a call, he has to wait a while, and I come upon him with Dr. Landgraf, gaping at the moon, as he says! Cheerful walk home with him. In the evening he reads us his introduction; he says, “I give little, but I spare nothing, either.” After that, continue with Coriolanus. Hans sends me his letters to Herr Senff; dismal impression...
January 9, 1878	74	Richard resumes composition and describes his current work with a playful operatic comparison at lunch. The day brings modest support for the Society of Patrons and a walk together, but it ends on a more frustrated note when he decides against publishing his C Major Overture.	Wednesday, January 9: R. returns to work! At lunch, recalling Rossini’s Moses, he says, “I’m now making my two Pharaohs sing their duet.” I continue arranging books with Herr v. W. An aunt of his has sent 100 marks for the Society of Patrons. Walk with R. Unfortunately when we return home he is vexed about his C Major Overture and decides not to publish it. In the evening the history of the Arabs and Coriolanus.
January 10, 1878	163	Shared dreams, skating with the children, and Richard’s remark that they are living through their happiest time give the day an intimate, celebratory tone. He continues composing, revises the Siegfried Idyll proofs with special affection, and the evening’s reading of Coriolanus leaves the diarist profoundly shaken.	Thursday, January 10: Skating for the children, R.’s cold weather has arrived! Last night we dreamed more or less the same thing—that I was arranging concerts for somebody and R. was jealous. We laugh. “We are now enjoying the happiest time of our lives,” he said yesterday evening. At lunch he announces, “My Pharaohs are locked in battle,” and tells me I will be amazed to see what he has done with the words zu diesem Amt verdammt sein [“to be condemned to this office”]. With R. and the children on the ice. Correcting the proofs of the Siegfried Idyll; R. says, “It is my favorite composition.” In the evening the history of the Arabs and then the conclusion of Coriolanus. Never before has the scene between the women and C. had such an overwhelming effect on me! I can hardly contain my emotion. One must acknowledge that one can never really know these works; they are inexhaustible. And to hear them read by R.!
January 11, 1878	166	Richard works in high spirits and speaks hopefully of moving on to Die Sieger after Parsifal so that his creative state may continue uninterrupted. A bright winter day, skating with the children, and intimate late conversation about Parsifal round out an atmosphere of domestic happiness and artistic confidence.	Friday, January 11: R. works. Before lunch he tells me things are going so well for him that he intends to compose Die Sieger immediately after Parsifal, in order to prolong his condition. I teased him for talking as if things did not always go well for him. Cheerful mood. Lovely winter weather. The children on the ice, we with them. In the evening the history of the Arabs. R. does not take as much pleasure in it as at the first reading. I tell him the reason is that he is such a productive reader, he conjures up a vivid picture and believes it is the author who has created it, and then he is astonished not to find it again! After our friends have left, we remain together talking intimately about Parsifal. R. speaks of the perplexity with which Parsifal listens to Amfortas's complaints; his mysterious, unconscious gestures of fellow-suffering, which comes out into the open with Kundry's kiss and only then becomes clear to him.
January 12, 1878	111	Richard spends the morning wrestling with a single modulation in Amfortas’s Lament and mockingly calls himself an idiotic composer even as the work advances. Cold weather and concern for Fidi’s damp room shape the household, and the evening turns from the history of the Arabs to amused ridicule of Spohr’s recitatives.	Saturday, January 12: Around lunchtime R. plays me what he has composed of Amfortas's Lament; the modulation on the words "nach ihm" ["after him"] occupied him the whole morning. Talking about it at lunch, he says, "I sit there, looking at your portrait, [illegible word], I am an idiotic composer, it's all such an effort." Very cold weather. Worry about Fidi, whose room has become damp; we move him to the nursery. In the evening the history of the Arabs. Then R. sings us some of the recitatives from Jessonda, in which the "interchange of feeling" and similar absurdities make us laugh a lot. "Such things never occur with French composers," says R.
January 13, 1878	294	Richard reflects on past dates in his life, worries over a passage that may need to be rewritten, and jokes about his inability to modulate mechanically when inspiration fails him. The evening combines music from Parsifal, encouraging signs of support for Bayreuth, a gracious royal letter, and his determined refusal to engage with the Schwerin Walküre affair.	Sunday, January 13: "A son has arrived" R. remembers his happiness when Vreneli spoke these words to him! Yesterday evening, thinking about various dates in his life, R. felt he had made a mistake in his biography, and that it was only the stillness of the Asyl garden which fell in his memory like Good Friday; it had not, in fact, been Good Friday. In the evening R. says he will have to rewrite everything he wrote during the morning. He was looking for a certain key, and mechanical modulation is something he finds impossible! "I'm a fine musician," he says with a laugh, adding that it is only when he is working without reflection that he finds what he wants if he starts to consider how to transpose a theme into another key, he gets confused! He sings us Titurel and the beginning of Amfortas. Impossible after that to pick up something like the history of the Arabs! We gradually drift into conversation. A nice letter has arrived from the King, and it is read aloud. Herr v. W. tells us of all sorts of good things he has experienced in connection with the Society of Patrons; the Academic Society in Vienna is behaving very well again and has sent 200 florins. A Herr Kirschner, who prepares statistics for all the theater periodicals, writes declaring his utter devotion to Bayreuth! A "Juge" ["judge"] wishes the Blatter to be sent to him. All of them touching signs! Herr Hill writes about Die Walküre in Schwerin; R., however, is ignoring this production entirely, and he deposits unopened on Hans Wolzogen's desk a letter in which the latter's father is presumably offering a royalty payment. The conductor Schmitt has written to me, but R. asks me not to reply.
January 14, 1878	129	The day is filled with letters, family concern over Fidi’s health, and one of the household’s recurring private jokes, as every mishap is now labeled Eulalia. Practical matters intrude when Feustel asks that the King approve payment of Munich royalties, while Richard turns even a walk home past two lean cows into thoughts of Pharaoh’s dream.	Monday, January 14: Letters of all kinds. R. inscribes the pages "Eulalia"! Everything that has gone awry is now called "Eulalia," after an anecdote in the Fliegende Blatter! R. says laughingly that future generations will think it refers to a secret love! Fidi not quite well, which causes us concern. In the afternoon I have a conversation with Herr Feustel, and he requests me to ask the King to approve payment of royalties by the Munich theater. I thank friend Feustel very cordially for entrusting this to me and sparing R. at this time. R. comes to fetch me, and I return home with him. Two lean cows remind him of Pharaoh's dream, which keeps him occupied the whole way home. We converse in the evening, then two "songs from Hell."
January 15, 1878	147	Wolzogen’s new membership figures brighten the day by showing real financial support for the Society of Patrons, and his memorandum for the Blatter is well received. That hope is offset by fresh distress over Hans’s hostile letter, ongoing worries around Walküre performances, and the diarist’s sense that Richard’s darker mood may stem from money troubles despite the beauty of the music he shares that evening.	Tuesday, January 15: Our friend Wolzogen works out the membership statistics of the Society of Patrons, according to which we possess about 11,000 marks! In the evening he reads us his memorandum for the Blatter, which, apart from a few stylistic blemishes, is excellent. Dismay over a letter from Hans with an enclosure; R.'s letter deliberately misinterpreted! I reply to Hans that it would indeed have been better to remain silent but from the very start! R. has been working: "No more Eulalia," he says! I suggested to Herr Feustel that the royalties from Die Walküre in Schwerin be put toward the deficit. Talked about Die Walküre, the performances of which seem fated to bring us sorrow! In the evening R. plays us the "Grail March" and sings "Amfortas's Lament." He seems to me to be in a somewhat bad mood; I fear it is due to financial worries.
January 16, 1878	116	While Richard works after a poor night, the diarist secretly appeals to the King for royalties to help reduce the deficit. The day mixes practical business with a haunting dream of Fidi sinking beneath the water, and it ends with reading from The Spaniards.	Wednesday, January 16: Library again. R. works meanwhile; he did not have a very good night, but he does not feel unwell. Without his knowledge I write to the King, begging him to give orders that royalties be paid on R.'s works to help wipe out the deficit. A Spaniard, Herr Marsillach, announces the publication of his book and asks for an autograph as a motto. R. writes it. Today during his afternoon rest he had a sad dream: someone was singing on the water, I said I did not care for it, then we got nearer, and it was Fidi, who, still singing, sank beneath the water, saying, "Adieu, Papa, adieu. Mama"! In the evening The Spaniards.
January 17, 1878	59	Richard spends a quiet working day while the diarist handles accounts and the library, and an afternoon walk leaves him in good spirits. Evening reading moves from the history of the Arabs to Don Carlos, whose scene between the Queen and Posa affects them deeply.	Thursday, January 17: R. works. I am occupied with accounts and the library. R. goes for a walk in the afternoon, returns home in good spirits, and does some work. In the evening the history of the Arabs. After that Don Carlos, the scene between the Queen and Posa, moves us profoundly we pity people who no longer respond to it.
January 18, 1878	138	A welcome letter from Riga about Parsifal adds to Richard’s confidence, and he declares the work more magnificent the further it progresses. The evening brings both humor and resolve: he jokes about dubious advice from afar, shares powerful new Parsifal music in private, and decides that another earlier composition should remain unpublished.	Friday, January 18: Nice letter from H[err] Glasenapp in Riga about Parsifal. R. works, then tells me he has never thought up anything as "terrific" as this work, it gets better and better! Yesterday we had to laugh heartily over a letter from our good Lesimple, who declares that Herr Lindau has been won over, is delighted with Parsifal! In the evening R. says, "I have got Amfortas to shut his mouth." When our friends have gone, he plays me the wonderful fulfillment of the prophecy following Amfortas's last words. A man in Olmütz (named Mandelblüh!) sends suggestions for altering the chorus of the Valkyries to make it sound better! R. plays through his Sonata in A Major and decides not to publish it, either; he says the "Fantasie" is more him, this could be by one of Spohr's pupils.
January 19, 1878	108	Richard presses on with work while telling the diarist that the hardest part still lies ahead, later feeling pleased with a compositional solution for the knights’ voices. The day ends in domestic tension when he resents her obligation to fetch Lulu from a ball, leaving her saddened and longing to be freed from such duties.	Saturday, January 19: R. works, tells me that the hardest part now lies ahead; in the evening he informs me that he has made the knights join in on the words "harre sein" ["await him"], otherwise the boys' voices would have gone too low: "That was a good idea I had." He goes out in the afternoon, in the evening he is upset that I should feel obliged to fetch Lulu from a ball, where she is with friends; to see me under an obligation toward anyone but himself offends him. I feel sad and can only hope that a kind guardian angel will soon relieve me of this task.
January 20, 1878	148	The day feels harmoniously balanced between love and labor as Richard, visibly radiant, improvises the newly conceived Communion service and speaks vividly about its orchestral effect. His amused reaction to Berlioz’s grandiose scoring, a short walk, and an affectionate remark about Fidi deepen the diarist’s mingled bliss and anxiety.	Sunday, January 20: Everything evenly balanced: love and the blessings of work. In the evening R. improvises the Communion service in the way he has now designed it: "The percussion will accompany the singing, like a faint earth tremor." R. looked through Berlioz's scores of the Requiem and Te Deum and laughed over the many instructions they contain for the percussion players, etc., etc.; he said it reminded him of a theater director setting straight the wigs of his actors; the uproar on the "rex tremendae majestatis" made him laugh heartily. He goes for a short walk in the palace gardens. I am delighted with his appearance in the evening: "I feel so well," he tells me with shining eyes. I am filled with both bliss and apprehension oh, this mortal life! R. says, "Fidi looks at me the way Parsifal looks on the Grail, in a wonder of amazement."
January 21, 1878	231	A nightmare of estrangement unsettles the morning, but Richard throws himself back into work and struggles over a modulation while remaining enthralled by Parsifal. The day’s practical interruption comes from visiting theater men eager for his works and willing to bargain hard, and he accepts because their need flatters him and the household needs money.	Monday, January 21: R. dreamed of a complete break between us. “What is the good of knowing that inside us we belong entirely to each other,” he exclaims, “when something like this is still possible?” When I ask him how he can ever dream such things, he says: “Well, our dear Lord is not selective when he wants to wake us up, or rather, he is selective, and chooses the most hideous thing he can think of, knowing he can no longer scare me much with the failure of one of my operas.” R. had to get up very early. However, he managed to work and is utterly filled with his glorious work. He thinks he will not allow Titurel to speak again after the rites. “A modulation” causes him difficulties in the afternoon and, as he is going off to sleep, I hear him cry aloud, “It must be A flat, G flat, F.” A curious interruption in our sublime life is provided by the visit of the opera director Angelo Neumann from Leipzig and Israel. He has come for the Ring but would also like to have Parsifal. He coaxes R. out of half the royalties for the subscription quota, in short, is just what such gentlemen always are. R. says he has nothing against his coming, insofar as it shows they still need him, and we need money, so agreement is reached!
January 22, 1878	165	Richard calls the diarist in to hear the unveiling of the Grail and shares music she experiences as almost angelic in its tenderness and exaltation. Later they finish the history of the Arabs, enjoy Shakespeare’s rough common life in Henry IV, and laugh at yet another unsolicited contribution to Nibelung lore.	Tuesday, January 22: Around lunchtime R. calls me and says he has something to show me; he plays and sings to me the heavenly scene of the uncovering of the Grail. As tender and exalted as Salvation itself! The words “Wein und Brot des letzten Mahles” sound like an ancient saga told by angels. “But I won’t let the old man appear again,” R. says; “he would remind me too much of that old gondolier in Venice who always butted in when others were singing.” Stormy weather, no sun, but no cold, either. In the evening finished the history of the Arabs. Then the Falstaff scenes in Henry IV Part I. R. says the scene with the carriers and Gadshill is one of those he admires most of all. “That is real closeness to Nature, for the life of the common people is Nature.” A man sends us a paper about the Nibelungs; R. says, “I’ve only got to hear the syllable Hi now to take to my heels.”
January 23, 1878	89	Despite another bad night, Richard declares they are living like gods and even reverses himself by restoring Titurel after all. The day also includes discussion of the Grail temple staging, and the evening culminates in music the diarist hears as among the most glorious ever written.	Wednesday, January 23: R. says, “We are living like gods,” although he again had a disturbed night. In the evening he says to me, “You will laugh!,” and he shows me the part of Titurel, whom he has brought in again after all. In the morning we discussed the scenery for the Temple of the Grail, and I suggest a basilica, two naves leading through pillars to doors hidden behind them. In the evening R. plays and sings to us the most glorious scenes ever to have been written and set to music!
January 24, 1878	226	Richard continues working pleasurably while revising text in Parsifal and unfolding a private theology in which Godhead is identified with Nature and salvific will. They admire Shakespeare over meals, begin The Heart of Midlothian together, and the day ends quietly with him content despite his lingering sleep troubles.	Thursday, January 24: R. is still disturbed at night. But he works with enjoyment. At lunch he tells me, “I shall alter the words den Erlöser, den ihr preist into Liebes-Geist, der euch speist, for den ihr preist is flat, it is there just for the sake of the rhyme.” Our final words yesterday had to do with the Godhead; I: “I must believe in it: my unworthiness and my happiness lead me to believe.” He: “The first part, your unworthiness, you can cross out; Godhead is Nature, the will which seeks salvation and, to quote Darwin, selects the strongest to bring this salvation about.” At lunch we admired once again the objectivity of Shakespeare’s genius; Henry V, hero and model, thoroughly unsympathetic. His Lancaster instinct makes him feel he should appear better than he is, and he leads a wild life purposely, as it were, in order to make an impression. The ending of Henry V, with its marriage scene, incredible in its veracity. If only R. could sleep well again at night! We ate alone together upstairs, both lunch and supper. We start The Heart of Midlothian by W. Scott and find much enjoyment in it. R. tells me of the alteration in his text, now fixed. When I wish him a very good night, he says he is all contentment now, and little disturbances do not affect him.
January 25, 1878	49	Living almost secluded upstairs, the couple enjoy another day of concentrated love and work while Richard jokes about sending his visitors off to the Radetzky March. The evening’s main pleasure is again Walter Scott.	Friday, January 25: Again we ate alone upstairs with R. “I shall soon have my monsieurs shuffling off to the Radetzky March,” he says with a laugh. Another blissful day of love and work, oblivious of the world. In the evening our noble W. Scott again gives us the utmost enjoyment.
January 26, 1878	125	Richard remains absorbed in his work and sings a newly completed phrase from Parsifal that exactly matches his intention, leaving the diarist shaken with joy and fear. Their happiness feels almost ecstatic, though concern over his painful foot darkens the day.	Saturday, January 26: Work with the children, hearing the sacred sounds! R. is still preoccupied when he comes to lunch, and in the evening he sings to me “Selig in Liebe, selig im Glauben” [“Blessed in love, blessed in faith”]. “Oh, that’s beautiful!” he cries, “exactly as I wanted it.” And it is beautiful! How can I describe these feelings which send shivers through me? How express this wish to die, this apprehension about his well-being, this blessing and trembling, this pleading and thanking? Our life is now even more blissful, ecstatic, than it was in Tribschen! Only the knowledge that R.’s foot is giving him pain and preventing his walking much casts a shadow over my feelings, and a large one, alas! In the evening W. Scott.
January 27, 1878	48	Richard sleeps badly and suffers digestive trouble, yet still works, leaving the diarist torn between gratitude and anxiety. Outside their household, rumors of peace in the East offer hope after so much recent suffering.	Sunday, January 27: R. got no sleep after 3:30 a.m. and had digestion troubles. He works still, and thus I hover between bliss and apprehension! Rumors of peace in the East; we are hoping for a serious and definitive solution to this problem, after all the terrible sufferings it has caused.
January 28, 1878	214	The outside world presses in through theater politics, reports from Vienna and Munich, and the arrival of proofs, but the diarist remains chiefly preoccupied by fear for Richard’s health. He feels tired and laughs about being forbidden to compose, while she reflects on how happiness itself has become inseparable from dread of losing him.	Monday, January 28: Herr v. Hülsen has forbidden the theater managers in Kassel, Wiesbaden, Hanover to produce anything not previously approved by him!! The German Reich! R. feels tired. I beg him from my heart not to overwork, and all day long he says with a laugh, “I’m not permitted to compose.” Friend Standhartner reports that Hans [Richter] has made up for his remissness and that Rheingold is a big success in Vienna, which we doubt, insofar as we have received no telegrams about it. Friend Feustel reports that he has found everything progressing well in Munich, and it therefore seems that my letter had a not unfavorable effect on the King. The proofs of the periodical have arrived, and R. is working. So everything is nice and pleasant, but my feelings of apprehension persist. When one has been used to difficulties, one takes only a painful delight in happiness; what is happiness but complete disassociation from life and the world, a premonition of death, and indeed a longing for it? I am filled with horror at the thought of a life in which he would not be there to show me the way, to bring me salvation. Even our simple “good night,” a momentary separation, conjures up this vision and makes me shudder. Oh, this mortal life!
January 29, 1878	161	Richard appears physically worn even as he completes the penciled sketches dated January 29 and shares more of Parsifal’s subtle, hovering development. The diarist responds with a rapturous description of the music and contrasts his inner greatness with a shallow public world busy with empty commemorations.	Tuesday, January 29: R. had a good night, that is, he got up only once. But to my eyes he looks run down. On the penciled sketches is written “January 29, ’78” - they are finished. R. shows me the voice which breathes the words selig im Glauben once again after Parsifal has been repulsed by Gurnemanz. I said to R. that, just like the imperceptible change and the unfelt development within Parsifal himself, this music develops, changes, hovers; one is wrapped up and borne along by it as if by magic. Light gives way to dark as in the colors of clouds at sunset, and all one feels is a constant, unchanging sense of spiritual well-being as one is borne along by it. And what is the world doing for him? The W. Society in Berlin is having a commemoration day! In this chasm which divides him from the world I lay all my love, my poor, infinite love, filled with sacrificial longings!
January 30, 1878	143	Morning conversation turns bitterly toward Germany’s failure to support Richard despite all he has achieved. He later attends to letters and staging advice, but the day closes more tenderly when he tells the diarist that she is the reason he believes in God.	Wednesday, January 30: When I say to R. in the morning that it is at any rate a good thing the French no longer have a say in foreign affairs, he replies, “But what have we to show, we Germans?” He recalls the behavior of the people and of the princes toward him, how none of them are following him, supporting him; after carrying through the festival in spite of all difficulties, what does he now get but silence? In the evening R. inks in his work after writing a few letters, among them one to Herr Pollini, saying he should present Rheingold at the same time as Walküre and not after it. In the evening W. Scott. R. looks in on me when he returns from his walk and says, “You are a gift from Heaven; it’s because of you that I believe in God!”
January 31, 1878	116	After a disturbed night and brief headache, Richard completes the ink sketch of the first act’s conclusion and the couple spend the evening immersed in grateful memories of Tribschen and their family life. Yet once alone, the diarist’s fear returns, centered on his painful foot and the digestive troubles it causes.	Thursday, January 31: R. had a somewhat disturbed night. He awakes with a headache, but it subsides; he works, and in the evening he shows me the ink sketch of the conclusion of the first act. Now thank we all our God is my prayer! We spend the evening in reminiscences of Tribschen, my joining him there, the subsequent arrival of the two elder children, Fidi's birth, lost in blissful thoughts. Only when I am alone does my apprehension return; R.'s foot prevents his taking walks, and that in turn upsets his digestive processes. He tells me it is nothing, that on the whole he feels very well, but how, once beset by it, can one banish worry?
No diary entries found.