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 1879 (28 total)

Date	Word Count	Subject	Content
January 1, 1879	577	Cosima opens the year with gratitude for an uninterrupted Wahnfried year and for the burden lifted from Wagner as Parsifal advances. The day mixes household order, visitors' praise of his conducting, and conversations about reincarnation, religion, and the hard won quiet of their life together.	Wednesday, January 1: Who could describe the feelings with which I wish R. good fortune today, at the conclusion of a year we were permitted to spend entirely at Wahnfried, unseparated, in which Parsifal came nearer to completion and a significant part of R.’s burden was lifted from his shoulders? Though it was late before he fell asleep, he had a tolerable night. He reads the shorter writings of Plutarch, which friend Wolzogen gave him for Christmas, and is enjoying them. I start to file away the papers for 1878, while the children are dismantling the Christmas tree, and receive calls, one of which, from Dr. Landgraf, gives me much pleasure. He says that R. seemed to him like a god, and none of the many pictures of him he has seen conveys anything of the expression on his face while conducting: his spirit passes into the others like an electric current! At lunch we talk about the dogma of palingenesis (Loldi said she believed in reincarnation), and R. tells the story of the virtuous prince who was blinded: Buddha explained that he had once blinded antelopes. How beautifully does this relate suffering to justice! And how pitiful, in comparison, our Jewish doctrine of sin! Springlike weather, sunshine, I go out of doors with indescribable emotions, look at the birds in the poultry yard which give R. so much pleasure, particularly the peacock; R. rests for a while, then goes to call on Councilor Kraussold, who does not really understand the purpose of his visit, paid by R. in recognition of the evening of the 25th. Returning home, R. settles down to work on Parsifal! I have told him that I no longer wish to hear any music except Parsifal, played by him. Before that, returning from his walk, he says to me, “I have been performing rose miracles in your room.” In the morning he placed on my bureau a little bottle of “Extract Richard Wagner,” which he brewed himself, and in the afternoon he pours a few drops of rose essence on my bouquet. In the evening we celebrate the “octave” of the concert with my “white robe” and with memories. Such joys are not ephemeral; my feelings are borne upward to Heaven as if on wings, all earthly things are forgotten, and all that remains in my heart apart from love is the desire to be and to do good. R. spoke a lot about Beethoven, how rarely he modulates, and how his teacher Weinlig had told him to what great extent his novelty lay in rhythm. Referring to the overture: “The jest of a creator, playing with the world.” Much about the symphony, too. As we part, R. says: “Oh, the way you looked at me that time in Zurich (1858)! I really was like Tristan, so modest; then I was told by K. Ritter that you both wanted to throw yourselves in the lake, and I became totally confused.” Over our after-lunch coffee he spoke of the dissolute companions with whom he spent his youth, and said it would not be necessary for Fidi to go through that - he has been rescued by the spirit of music, just as he himself, when that took possession of him, was liberated from all vulgarity. After supper I have to write to Paris regarding a dress which took his fancy in the fashion journal; we have to laugh heartily when he says, “If one is wise, one grasps such opportunities.”
January 2, 1879	278	Wagner enjoys Plutarch and shares its anecdotes while making delicate progress on Parsifal, especially a hazy, syncopated passage that enchants Cosima. The day moves from artistic excitement to memories of Paris, Minna, and the contrasts between his earlier struggles and present domestic happiness.	Thursday, January 2: R. had quite a good night; at breakfast he tells me many things from Plutarch, whose shorter writings he is now reading: Dionysius the Younger’s reply concerning Plato, etc., and he says, “They were so complete, those ancients!” I organize papers with friend Wolzogen, the tree is pushed to one side, and before we go to lunch, R. plays me what he has done today in ink: “Wirkte dies der heilige Tag,” the suggestion of the meadow, so heavenly in its twilight! “It must be nothing definite, just a slight haze - oh, how beautiful syncopes are, what lightness of movement they impart!” One magic is followed by another, and the new year begins for me today. At lunch R. tells us anecdotes from Plutarch - Porus, Antigonus, Demetrios, the whole thing splendid. As we are having our coffee, he remembers his early life in Paris, his visit to the singer Dupont, so difficult to find in his country house, only then to have “Mignonne” refused! And so home. “And how did Minna react?” “Oh, I suppose she bought radishes or something; she was sorry for me.” Heavy snow flurries, which please R., for he can stay indoors and work. The Wolzogens in the evening; R. goes through his “Language” with him and exhorts him always to maintain a tone of dignity, never to make use of “un-German” language, even in fun. Talking about Plutarch leads him to Droysen’s History of Hellenism, which he praises highly. When we are alone again, he plays to me what he was working on today, Parsifal’s entrance and the removal of his armor. Fairest of blessings, final consecration of a blessed day!
January 3, 1879	377	After an anxious dream gives way to peaceful sleep, Wagner reflects on musical color, landscape, Weber, Mendelssohn, and ancient authors. Cosima records both his renewed work and the mingling of admiration, judgment, and intimate concern that frames their household conversations.	Friday, January 3: R. slept well, at any rate toward the end of the night. I sent up a grateful prayer when I heard him breathing in quiet slumber beside me after he had awakened in agitation from a nasty dream. We talk about music, and R. remarks how beautiful, indeed powerful, flutes can sometimes sound, in the Prelude to Parsifal, for instance. Then he comes back to the Calm Sea Overture and observes, “One might say that he had a good ear for landscape.” When I say it seems to me that Weber led the way for him, and in Weber it all sounds so different, as if one were hearing the beating of a human heart, so to speak, he replies, “Oh, yes, undoubtedly.” He then reflects on Mendelssohn’s personality, says the same thing happened to him as to certain apes who, so gifted when young, become stupid as their strength increases. “I saw him (M.) after his marriage, and he looked so fat, so unpleasant, an unsavory fellow!” R. does a little work. At lunch it is again Plutarch who fills our conversation with lovely glimpses of the ancient world. Over coffee R. tells me his dream, and I have to weep over it. We, the children and I, and particularly Lulu, threw him out of the house, and he had a kind of bad conscience, reacted in a cowardly way, and just said to Lulu, “If only you knew how unjust you are being!” R. laughs at my grief and says that whatever it is that is trying to wake him up always chooses the most horrible means. Herr Rubinstein comes in the evening; R. has given him a task to do, and he speaks of the sculptural quality in Beethoven, saying this is the true sign of his work, even more than the rhythmical quality stressed by Weinlig; he tries to explain this quality to Herr R., and says with regard to the instrumentation, “It is quite superb in Beethoven, the groupings and so on, only now and again he misjudges the strength of various instruments, and if one tries to redress the balance a little one is doing him a service.” Today, around noon, he comes up to my room singing, “My Parsifal will be good.”
January 4, 1879	183	Wagner has a poor but not alarming night and spends the day unwell, reading rather than composing. The entry turns from editing Wolzogen's prose to Wagner's irritation over money and his scornful thoughts about universities, theaters, and the pressures surrounding his work.	Saturday, January 4: Again R. did not have a good night, but there were no alarming episodes, and after breakfast he greets me with the verse “My wife comes from her bath, and life resumes its normal path!” But all day long he does not feel well, and he does no work, reading Plutarch and also the Fliegende Blätter instead. In the evening I read some of Wolzogen’s “German Language” to him, and we mark places where the style does not seem very good. I do not know why, but late in the evening he says: “Oh, I shall show these gentlemen! I would close all the universities on the spot - and then seek ways and means of enabling significant men to teach.” R. is somewhat annoyed at the nonarrival of the advance from Mannheim. A few days ago, referring to the release of the King to the theaters, he likened himself to a faithful dog who defended the basket of meat from other dogs for a long while, but in the end, assailed on all sides, fell on it himself and ate it up!
January 5, 1879	246	A good night and cheerful talk about Fidi lead into a rare lunch away from Wahnfried, which Cosima finds subtly disruptive to the household's creative spell. Wagner reads Plutarch, laments public affairs, and voices his sense of distance from contemporary politics even as they intrude on conversation.	Sunday, January 5: R. had a good night, and he works today, after talking a lot with me about Fidi, who had just taken a bath with him. Joy over the boy’s good, sunny character. Today R. and I have lunch in the home of our neighbor Baroness Staff. R. looks well, and I hope that this deviation from our normal routine will not harm him. It is true that he was unable to work afterward, and I, too, remain somewhat distracted. It has a magic of its own, this life of ours in Wahnfried, but the secret of its success is that one must yield to it entirely and never abandon it, even for an instant; the mood is not so easily restored. R. reads Plutarch and tells us admiringly of Agesilaus’s reply: “If one is always prudent, one has no need of courage.” “How sad it is to have constantly to exclaim that all these things no longer concern one,” says R. as we are talking about present conditions; the Chancellor is said to be threatening again to resign unless protective tariffs are accepted, yet at the same time he wants to introduce indirect taxation, in order, as R. says, to gain a power for himself for which he will not have to answer: “Our present calamity is seen just as an opportunity for extending his power; they have no feeling for the people.” We have discovered many unpleasant things about Herr Kellermann. A difficult situation for us.
January 6, 1879	133	Wagner feels ready to move from inking old sketches to composing again, and he predicts that Parsifal's completion will make the coming year better still. The evening returns to family pleasure, Wolzogen's writing, and a frank dismissal of Kellermann as evidence of Wagner's present domestic contentment.	Monday, January 6: R. had a good night and now intends to get on with the composition - up till now he has only been inking in his penciled sketches. Cheerful breakfast! When I tell him my only wish is that this year be as good as the last, he says, “It will be even better; Parsifal will be completed, and then I won’t bother myself about anything at all.” R. does not go out today, and we spend the evening alone together, after having had a great deal of fun with the children at supper. We go through friend Wolzogen’s “Language” and discuss once more the distasteful subject of K[ellermann]: “The fact that I have put up with this poor creature for so long shows how happy I am with you and the children.”
January 7, 1879	179	Wagner begins composing again with eight new bars and seems restored by a walk and by Xenophon's Socratic wit. The day also includes sharp political remarks and a comic domestic dispute over a seamstress's price, which Cosima turns into affectionate reflection on Wagner's impulsiveness.	Tuesday, January 7: R. had a good night, and as we embrace before parting, he says, “Now I’m going to prepare for your next birthday!” He intends to start sketching today; he spent yesterday collecting his thoughts. At lunchtime he comes to tell me that he has composed 8 bars. A visit we receive at coffeetime gives him an opportunity to state his views on our modern laws: one has only to mention the Jews, he says, and one is all but stoned. R. goes for a walk in the afternoon and feels well after it. He is reading Xenophon’s Memorabilia with great enjoyment, and he reads to us the page on which Charicles begs Socrates to leave the cowherds in peace. A very curious, amicable difference of opinion occurred today between R. and me; the seamstress names her price, I find it too high, R. does not, and he writes to her, placing the order! All I can then do is laugh heartily and tell R. that since I do not possess his genius, I cannot expect to have his rashness!
January 8, 1879	674	Wagner reports sound sleep, jokes about Cosima's dress order, and adds ten bars to Parsifal. News of Herr Muller's death prompts memories of Cosima's early reputation, Wagner's former disorderly life, and the relief his friends must have felt at their union.	Wednesday, January 8: “Fourteen days ago there was humming going on downstairs, but you didn’t notice,” says R., after telling me that he slept well. We have a lot more fun about the dress he ordered yesterday, and he says, raising a clenched fist, that he is “horribly” annoyed with himself for not having ordered one which particularly pleased him last year! He works: “Exactly ten bars today,” he tells me when he fetches me for lunch. He has received news of the death of the stout-hearted Herr Müller, and he recalls his friendly judgment on me back in 1857: “She is a real thoroughbred” - he (R.) had been so pleased by this, and also by his delight when he saw us come together. “That must have been a real weight off the minds of all my friends who knew about my disgraceful life. What they all had to put up with from me! Something like an avalanche lies between my former life and my present life.” He looks at the photograph of Semper which friend Lenbach has sent me, the exact image of an old lazzarone. “That’s how I shall look one day,” he says. I: “Oh!” He: “No, I believe I shall always look well, for I grow happier every day.” I tell him I have been reading his Stabat Mater and enjoyed it very much, whereupon he: “Yes, after having spent two years in Paris! And after only one I was completely finished with it all. I wrote that article in my little room, when I had stopped going out, and saw and heard nothing - from that point of view these things are not uninteresting.” We then return to the subject of Semper, whose genius had so astounded me at our first meeting in Zurich. R. asks whether I would have married him. I: “Before Hans, yes; after Hans, no.” It would have been a bad match, R. observes. We then recall Semper’s assertion that it did not matter at all to him for whom or for what he did his work, also his antipathy toward Christianity. R. says, “For the plastic artist things can only come from the outside world, and Christianity can’t produce any buildings.” It is very cold, but R. goes out both morning and afternoon, and it does him good. When I return home, I find him walking up and down in the salon, so cheerful and content that my heart laughs to see him. “Things are going so well for me,” he says! We celebrate the octave of my birthday, I in white, as on every Wednesday now, and we remain alone together. Hans’s birthday brings our thoughts back to the past; we recall Jan. 8, 1868, in Munich, R.’s moving speech at the little celebration; it is all so sad; in the morning R. had thought of my father’s visit to him at Tribschen, during which my father was filled with deep pity for his loneliness but could do no more than point as consolation to the portrait of the King! R. says: “Nobody believes in real love - even Hans thought I was just amusing myself. The fact that I had often been prepared to accept money made them all contemptuous of me. I knew what my feelings were when I accepted it, but for them it was a matter of pride not to accept anything from anybody.” A letter from E[lisabeth] Nietzsche brings back to us our experiences with her brother. The news that he, N., wants Parsifal to be staged makes R. smile bitterly: “Now they think I have no other wish but to stage another such performance” - whereas all that concerns him is how he can avoid it. I: “It is only necessary not to wish it.” R., with a sigh: “Oh, one would like it to happen, and yet one doesn’t want to do it” - that is our sadly conflicting position. But all these reflections melt into joy, today as on all other days, in the knowledge that we found each other in this terrible existence!
January 9, 1879	413	Cosima watches over Wagner's sleep with anxious gratitude while he continues composing and finds Plutarch calming. A London parcel and the scent of roses lead him to compare concentrated perfume with the compression of words and music in the scene he is creating.	Thursday, January 9: R. slept well; while I was watching gratefully over his dear sleep, gloomy pictures passed through my mind - oh, Fate, be gracious toward me! R. works and tells me at lunch that he has completed 6 bars, but they are very significant ones. Before his work he reads Plutarch, which is just the right thing for him, since it does not overexcite him. He goes for a walk and enjoys the air. I have to stay indoors, and in the evening he drinks his grog in my room, after bringing me a belated Christmas gift! He talks about his composition after we have spent some time, prompted by the parcel from London, talking about extract of roses, whose perfume (a particular favorite of his) he describes as “rapturous.” He says: “During the morning I was thinking something I could not tell a soul - that in a scene like this the words and music are concentrated, more or less like this extract, to make a frivolous comparison; I could talk about all kinds of subjects, say things only I could say, there is so much concentrated inside me. Yet one walks the earth in silence and is then forgotten.” I: “Forgotten!” He: “Oh, what is posthumous fame? I always think of Schopenhauer’s likening it to oyster shells. What does the world know of Goethe and Schiller except the shells? Till someone comes along to whom they mean something. Draft announcing the cancellation of Parsifal, to be appended to the Retrospect”; I observe that he can easily afford to let the year go by, make his announcement to the patrons, and return their money. While we are passing the evening in chat, he looks back on his life and says, “I do not know whether I am dreaming now or was dreaming then - it must have been then, for I was always creating illusions for myself and deliberately keeping them alive.” He tells me of his sudden departure for Paris (1858), for which he borrowed money from Semper and Müller: “I was always wanting to go away and not return - if anything had turned up in Paris, I should not have returned, but nothing did. That’s why I cannot believe in those novels in which princesses in hooded cloaks come along - or a friend.” We laugh heartily at this thought, and then he speaks very warmly of Blandine, whom he met on this journey. He is much enjoying the Memorabilia.
January 10, 1879	345	A disturbing dream about Cosima gives way to a productive, cheerful day in which Wagner works, walks, and enjoys lunch with the family. His metaphysical reflections on combustion, earthly vapors, and human existence are met by Cosima's inward resolve to be worthy of the happiness she calls her heaven.	Friday, January 10: R. had a nasty dream about me; when I complain about this, he says I ought to be pleased that nothing else works, and that if he has to be frightened into waking up, I am the only effective means of achieving it. He works, then goes for a walk, is looking well when he returns to my side, and we have such a cheerful and friendly lunch in the children’s salon that, after he has left, I feel that in one’s youth love could never shine and bestow its blessings so purely. Devout people wish to be good in order to secure their place in Heaven, I wish to be worthy of my Heaven, and so I close my heart to all wicked impulses. As R. sits down at the table beside me, he says: “Every day I become more and more conscious of the terrible facts of existence. Today, for instance, I thought of the earth’s vapors, which come from its inner fires and return to us as rain; this means that the human being is nothing but a form of combustion, self-consuming - dreadful!” I tell him that I am almost continually aware of life’s justice, punishment for bad deeds, reward for good ones. We quote several examples, small and great, and he cites Buddha and the stone thrown into the water which causes a widening circle of ripples. R. goes for a walk in the afternoon, and in the evening I read the Memorabilia to him, a very great pleasure for us both. “When one compares the people of the i8th century to those people, with their lovely costumes, their sandaled feet, their way of looking for the beautiful in everything, courage, virtue, justice, all such things - how pitiful they look!” And: “We moderns are like the Greeks, who replaced Asiatic pomp with a natural civic sense, something we also aspire to nowadays. But how do modern people look - Machiavelli, for instance, who was closest to the Greeks in spirit - in comparison to them? What a background of corruption!”
January 11, 1879	249	Wagner wakes from another dream of Cosima leaving him, then turns the episode into playful French verse before moving through politics, Xenophon, and new musical ideas. His reflections on necessity lead into a glimpse of Parsifal's fainting scene, which he already imagines as one of the work's loveliest moments.	Saturday, January 11: R. slept well but once again dreamed that I wanted to go away with my father! . . . “And then, to my great good fortune, the cock began to crow,” or, rather, Georg brought him his Ems water. After saying this, he tries to translate it into French and sings, “Et Dieu, pour mon bonheur, le coq se mit à chanter,” or, correcting himself, “le coq se mit au chant!” Much talk about the French; R. says he is ashamed that their instincts about the Germans in 1870 had proved correct (Schure, for example). Of the approaching silver wedding anniversary of the Emperor and the Empress [of Austria] R. says, “They’ll ask for the presents to be changed into gifts for charity and a few nice cannons.” R. goes out twice today and is feeling well. In the evening I read the Memorabilia to him with all our usual enjoyment. He writes down another theme for a symphony. In the evening, when he fetches me for supper, he comes back to “But I will,” then says, “I will not, but I must.” “A human being must acknowledge necessity,” he says, “that’s what makes him divine.” At our last parting in the evening, after countless other partings, he says to me, “When Parsifal falls in a faint, that is when it begins (the meadow will not be a separate thing in itself); it will be the loveliest moment. I already have much of it in sketches.”
January 12, 1879	588	Dreams, patronage worries, and uncertain health unsettle the day, even as talk turns toward Naples and music from earlier operas. Cosima's anxiety is deepened by Wagner's fragility, but his return to the piano and his evening demonstrations restore some of the household's artistic brightness.	Sunday, January 12: R. slept well, woke up only once; in his first dream Marke sang an Italian chorus! The other dream was “creepy” again: “Minna was involved in it; she was supposed to return to me.” Discussions about his attitude toward the patrons. R. says, “If it were not for Wolzogen, I should cancel the whole thing.” He works, but afterward does not feel well and decides not to go out - yesterday’s walk in a biting east wind did him no good, he says. Naples at lunch! Plans for next winter. Then he tells the children his dream about Marke, saying his chattering teeth were probably responsible for this Italian choral accompaniment of the sort one hears in theaters: a builder’s apprentice sang and Marke did the accompanying! But I find it hard to be merry when he does not feel entirely well, when he is not, indeed, bursting with good spirits, and all day long I hear inside me Tristan’s “Wherever Tristan goes, is Isolde resolved to follow?” I hear it as I am reading the Odyssey to the children and accompanying Lusch to an afternoon party; it forms the melodic swell on which the poor bark of my existence is borne today. But when I return, R. is feeling and looking well. I find him at the piano, going through Médée, from which he plays me some very beautiful things. In the evening he remembers that, having just read his article On the Overture, I wished to hear some of the things mentioned in it. He starts with The Water Carrier, and at one point remarks how pretty it is, how it expresses something of the pleasure one takes in a good deed. Then Les Huguenots, whose second theme is particularly delightful, and afterward Anacreon. R. says: “Cherubini was certainly the greatest of musical architects, a kind of Palladio, rather stiffly symmetrical, but so beautiful and so assured. All the rest - Auber, Berlioz - are unimaginable without him.” He also points out to us details in which the influence on Beethoven can be seen. We end with La Vestale by Spontini - “warmer in feeling,” “more passionate,” “less of a master”; he says the first finale in Lohengrin, with its continuous melody, could be traced back to Spontini “rather than to Weber.” Over coffee he gazes at the wall on which Beeth., Goethe, and Schiller are hanging and says, “There Makart ought to paint a fresco for us, illustrating the Dionysian element in the introduction to the A Major Symphony.” He literally divides up the wall for it and says, “Even if the painting should not please us particularly, or its connection with the present not be very apparent, we could still take pleasure in the idea.” He thinks that Genelli would have been able to do it. Like a monarch of all the arts he could assign each of them his tasks! He sang something from La Vestale, Julia’s lovely words following the departure of the High Priestess, and it did not tire him. R. remarks that not a single one of the people he mentioned (in his “Retrospect”) has had a word to say to him about it. The publisher Schmeitzner has sent copies of Nietzsche’s books to Bismarck, who used the occasion to admonish the publisher for using Latin lettering, recommending German lettering instead! R. says, “That’s just like that uneducated Pomeranian Junker, who does not even know what the good German J. Grimm had to say on the subject.”
January 13, 1879	655	Wagner criticizes La Vestale, reflects grimly on instinct and death, and then works well enough to fill Cosima with elation. Their conversations move through his writings, Opera and Drama, and his pride in having pursued an unprecedented artistic aim with simple, natural expression.	Monday, January 13: R. slept well, and he leaves me in cheerful mood to go to his work, after talking about La Vestale; among other things, he says: “It is a dramatic mistake, which I myself should never have allowed to happen, to leave Julia alone in the street to sing her aria. I should have thought of something, my imagination would have come to my aid. But as it is, all plausibility is lost, we are back in the opera house.” When the water in his bath becomes very hot, he is reminded of death, and he wonders what it would be like if one were treacherously to be scalded to death like that, how natural instinct would rise up in a scream of protest. I tell him I often ask myself whether one would not at once bow to the inevitable. He thinks not. He is well and does some work, which makes me feel as if I had wings! But how foolish is the assumption that possession robs love of its dreams - how much I think of him, how often I gaze upon his picture, how dominant the wahnlos hellbewusste Wunsch [“the undeceived sweetly conscious wish”] of his presence! At lunch I tell him that I have finished the first volume [of his collected writings]. “Then I have at least one reader,” he says, and adds, “I must admit to being glad that even in my youth, urged on by my inner feelings, I always expressed myself in a simple and natural way, never just striving for effect.” About Opera and Drama he remarks, “It is a very curious work, and I was very excited when I wrote it, for it has no precedent in the history of art, and I was really pursuing a goal nobody had hitherto seen.” He is glad that Herr Musiol has so much respect for it. In the afternoon he goes for a walk and returns looking well, the dear, splendid man! Visit from Herr Levi, very pleasant. To start with, R. goes through Beeth.’s F Major Symphony with him, pointing out to him the passages he would like to see somewhat differently orchestrated; he repeats his view that “nobody has ever grouped strings and woodwind more ideally than Beeth., but just here and there he failed to judge the sound relationships quite correctly.” He points out the sf. in the trio of the minuet, which Herr Rietz gave to the horns as well. Then he reads to us the translation of the libretto of Les Abencérages, and, later still, he plays us his third act, up to the worship of the spear. He declares that Gurnemanz (whom he wishes he had described as an armorer) is his favorite character - he and similar figures such as H[ans] Sachs, Kurwenal. Later he tells me it would have been better if we had done this when we were by ourselves - all the same, it was indescribable! Friend Levi stays behind after our other friends have gone, and when he tells us that his father is a rabbi, our conversation comes back to the Israelites - the feeling that they intervened too early in our cultural condition, that the human qualities the German character might have developed from within itself and then passed on to the Jewish character have been stunted by their premature interference in our affairs, before we have become fully aware of ourselves. The conductor speaks of a great movement against the Jews in all spheres of life; in Munich there are attempts to remove them from the town council. He hopes that in 20 years they will be extirpated root and branch, and the audience for the King will be another kind of public - we “know differently”! Alone together again, R. and I discuss the curious attachment individual Jews have for him; he says Wahnfried will soon turn into a synagogue!
January 14, 1879	252	Wagner advances Gurnemanz's narration in Parsifal and defines its power as German simplicity joined to steadfast faith and good deeds. The day combines family levity, revisions to avoid a Cherubini-like turn, failed manuscript reading, and renewed delight in Mozart's Figaro.	Tuesday, January 14: R. slept well, he leaves me in cheerful mood to go to his work, and around noon he fetches me and sings to me Gurnemanz’s narration to Parsifal, up to the words “er starb, ein Mensch wie alle,” which is as far as he has got. When I attempt to explain to R. how moving I find this simple fervor, he says, “Yes, one could describe that as its essentially German quality, simplicity combined with immovable faith, and the urge to prove this faith through good deeds.” Before we enter the dining room, R. says to me, “I feel well, and my only wish is that it may go on like this forever.” Lunch with the children, much fun regarding our pet Israelites; R. thinks the only feeling they have in regard to his compositions is how well he does things. After lunch I beg R. to mark in the scores of Beeth.’s symphonies all the things he would like to see altered. He says, “After Parsifal.” In the evening, when I come down to supper, he shows me the alteration he has made to “er starb, ein Mensch wie alle.” “It was too much like Cherubini,” he said. In the evening the B. Platter went through manuscripts: Herr Lipiner on Prof. Lagarde, unfortunately again quite impossible. Then, to our utter delight, the sextet from Le Nozze di Figaro; R. can never impress on me too much the artistic mastery of this work, its delicacy, wit, charm, and fluidity.
January 15, 1879	333	Despite chest congestion, Wagner reaches Parsifal's fainting point and speaks of composition as the only state in which well-being feels justified. Thoughts of royalties, death, children, and Berlioz mingle in a day where creative progress sits beside mortality and severe musical judgment.	Wednesday, January 15: R. had a good night, but he complains of congestion in the chest and wishes me already to book the villa in Naples for next year. Yesterday afternoon he came to tell me that the royalties from Vienna have been good - all his works, even Kienzl, had earned something. I: “So they are good children, after all.” R.: “Yes, they have to go begging for me.” He fetches me for lunch and says, “I have got Parsifal to the point of fainting - I’m always glad when I’ve got my people where they ought to be.” Over coffee he says he can only bear his state of well-being when composing - otherwise it seems to him like a sin. He looks into the salon and says, “This is where I want to be carried when I die.” I reproach him for using the singular. He: “It’s better when one knows nothing about it, but all the same, when one is very old it must be nice to die in full awareness.” I tell him my only wish is that we do not leave the children while they are still dependent on us. He: “What do you expect? In 10 years I shall be Kraussold’s age, and Fidi will be 20; by then one knows who one is. We shall live to see Fidi’s children.” R. does some more work in the afternoon, and in the evening we go through Berlioz’s overtures to King Lear and Benvenuto Cellini with Herr Rubinstein. “Oh, Cherubini, Cherubini!” R. exclaims. Long discussion then about Berlioz, which he concludes with me upstairs by saying it would be better if such music had never been written. Barrenness, touches of vulgarity amid great eccentricity, overattention to detail, yet some true inspiration: “There are themes of his I remember,” R. says. “One theme in the Adagio of Roméo et Juliette is wonderful.” “But he belongs entirely to the French school.” Taken on the whole, a very unpleasing impression.
January 16, 1879	244	A comic but unsettling dream involving Minna and Mathilde Wesendonck gives way to steady work on Parsifal, where Kundry revives and tempts the hero. Later, Keller's Zurich stories captivate Wagner so strongly that the household spends the evening moved by their blend of melancholy, humor, and folk feeling.	Thursday, January 16: R. slept well, he laughingly tells me of his dream “while turning over in bed”: “I was between Minna and Mme Wesendonck. She was making horrible advances to me, to annoy Minna, at whom she kept looking. ‘All right, neither of them,’ I thought, and tried to get away, went around looking for a purse, in which there were some gold coins. ‘Is this devilry starting again?’ I said to myself on waking, but I was not driven from my bed.” He works and says at lunch that he has reached the point where Kundry arouses Parsifal again and he proposes marriage to her. Since the children were at a ball yesterday, R. again tells me how repulsive he, as a young man, found the balls to which his sisters went. In the afternoon R. goes for a walk in the palace gardens, and when he returns, I hand him the (Zurich) stories of G. Keller, which Herr Levi has just sent me. I do not know why, after a cursory glance, I recommend to him the last story in the second volume; when I come downstairs, he says, “I have been spending one of the pleasantest hours of my life.” Everything in the story he has begun he finds gripping, he says. In the evening he reads it to us, and we are truly moved by both melancholy and merriment. Ursula’s spiritual state is quite shattering, utterly feminine and folk-like.
January 17, 1879	293	Still absorbed by Keller, Wagner calls Cosima to hear new Parsifal music and links his happiness directly to the duty to work. Chest discomfort renews the plan for Naples, but the evening's completion of 'Ursula' leaves him longing for a contemporary musician with comparable vitality.	Friday, January 17: R. slept well; our conversation in the morning is devoted almost exclusively to the story; he leaves me with the greeting “Schiller, before he was raised to the aristocracy” (this because friend Gl. wrote that he calls our busts the Riga Goethe and Schiller!). Around noon, as I am dressing, I hear the cherished voice calling from upstairs, “Cosi - I want to play something to you.” I fly into his room, he sings to me Gurnemanz’s words Nicht so and all the rest up to so weiche jeder Schuld Bekümmernis von dir. After lunch we talk of Naples, whether to go at all - it is so lovely here, he says. Over coffee I tell him about the orthopedist who was here to see the children, and he remarks that I am doing too much; this makes me laugh, but he continues: “Things are going so well for me that I want to work, in order to earn my happiness.” But in the afternoon he feels pain in his chest and decides after all on Naples for next winter; he says how quickly the 10 years of our happy life together have flown. When he goes, I call out after him, “I think only of you!” He: “And I only of myself, for that means you.” In the evening we finish “Ursula,” I doing the reading since he has slight chest congestion. We remain enchanted to the end; R. says: “Oh, if I could only find a contemporary like that in the musical field!” Fortunate Switzerland, where such a writer is still possible! Zwingli, because of his quarrelsomeness, feasible only within a narrow community, impossible to imagine Luther sword in hand in the general “mishmash” of the German empire.
January 18, 1879	900	Wagner has another poor night but still works, while frost, Italy, Mendelssohn, Keller, and Bach frame the household's inner life. Cosima records both his harsh musical polemics and his continued vulnerability, including chest congestion and a cold spell that keeps him indoors.	Saturday, January 18: R. had a disturbed night. . . . I find it hard to bear all the love with which he nevertheless always overwhelms me! . . . However, he does some work, and at lunch he tells me he is satisfied with it, but he does not wish to go out of doors. We admire the lovely frost-covered landscape and talk about Italy - Naples next year. When I go to him in the afternoon he has just been looking through [Mendelssohn’s] Saint Paul and is filled with utter disgust for it, calling it Jewish through and through, facile in form, shallow in content: “To serve us that,” R. exclaims, “after we have known Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber! - And as if one could ever hope to imitate Bach!” He is sorry that my father writes oratorios. We read the first half of another of the Zurich stories (“Das Fähnlein der sieben Aufrechten”) with great enjoyment, except that I do not care for Frymann’s speech, which seems to me too Periclean; R. says the Swiss get this sort of pathos from the pulpit, but he is inclined to agree with me. After that three preludes and fugues from the second book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, and we are particularly affected by the 9th. (Dr. Eiser is asking for the Prelude; R. annoyed, for nobody is supposed to know that it was performed... Sunday, January 19: R. again did not have a good night, and he has chest congestion. It is very cold. He works but does not go out. (At supper yesterday he talked about an article in the Illustrirte Zeitung, “The Elk Fighting the Wolves,” and said it had taught him some very curious things - how in Nature even the most heroic must perish, men as well as animals, “and what remain are the rats and mice - the Jews.” I told him that I had seen friend Wolz.’s two sisters-in-law in the mental hospital, and he talks with horror of the maintenance of such poor creatures, “which uses up the energies of the healthy and the good.”) I am kept very busy with the children, since the governess is away. R. has a short session with Herr Jager, the scene between Siegfried and the Norns, which soon exhausts him! In the evening he reads to our small company (Jag. and the Wolz.’s) more of the Aufrechten, which causes very great merriment. Monday, January 20: But R. had a very bad night, had to get up three times; a little dessert at lunch, then in the afternoon a glass of Ems water with milk, following the session with Jager, gave him real indigestion. He does no work, but rests, and at lunch does not look too bad. He also ventures out on the ice today. In the evening we finish the nice story. Recently, talking of G. Keller’s personality, R. said, “When he started talking and had something good to say, words poured from him like potatoes out of a sack.” Then he puts his hand on Mendelssohn’s Antigone and we go through parts of it with amazement, noting that M. does not once pay heed to the Greek verse meter and declaims it in the most nonsensical way. R. also draws my attention to the markings - “allegro,” “tempo di marcia” - this terrible tragedy! Then he takes up Figaro, plays the concluding finale and the two Cherubino arias so beautifully that, as always when he plays anything, I feel as if the secrets of art are being unveiled anew. I have a vision of a performance of this splendid and lovable work in our opera house here under his direction. “But with which singers?” R. asks. “Preferably Italians - Patti and Nicolini!” At once I have to admit the impossibility of achieving any sort of effect. Tuesday, January 21: It seems to me like a victory over life that R. had a good night! Toward one o’clock he says to me, “I have also done some composing, have done everything!” We drive out a little, paying calls, and are very cheerful; we discuss my present reading, Die Nibelungen, and enjoy the wintry yet bright sunshine. In the afternoon R. goes for a walk, and this does not appear to do him any good, for he is not feeling very well - at any rate he says the air felt unpleasant. But the evening passes in a very lively, cheerful way; first of all he goes through the choruses from Antigone with W[olzogen] and R[ubinstein], and we are once again astounded by their glee-club ordinariness; the allegro of the Overture also horrifies us with its triviality. Then several things from Die Entführung aus dem Serail, after which Herr R. recommends Idomeneo, but this does not please us and we go on to [Gluck’s] Alceste. R. plays through the Overture with R[ubinstein] and sings the Herald; this is both touching and uplifting - even antique, R. observes. Before that he had sought out some fine metrical examples (by Bach), since he cannot get over his amazement that Mendelssohn could find no way of matching the rhythms of Greek verse - he, a philologist, and so well educated! Speaking of his own work, R. says he now has only 9 more pages of his text to set to music, and all the epic scenes are finished.
January 22, 1879	232	A letter from the King and continued work are shadowed by Wagner's stiff neck and Cosima's mounting worry over his health. Keller's stories and medieval echoes offer pleasure, but prayer becomes Cosima's refuge as his indisposition darkens the day.	Wednesday, January 22: R. got up once during the night but did not have to take refuge in reading. A nice letter to him from the King. He works, but at lunch he complains of a stiff neck - his walk yesterday did him no good. Even when he is well I am never quite free of worry, but now any occupation is a strain on me - oh, this mortal life! . . . Ought one to envy the less favored? . . . R. is reading G. Keller’s “Hadlaub” (in the first volume); yesterday he looked up the Minnesinger poem quoted in it, and greeted me with “Augentrost,” also telling me about the bitten hand. When I tell him that I have written to Forges, as he asked me, instructing him in what he has to do - though I doubt whether it will do any good - R. says, “You are right; when Jews go along with us, they turn stupid; they’re clever only when they are against us.” In the evening I read to him “Der Narr auf Manegg” and the beginning of “Der Landvogt von Greifensee”; the latter story gives us great pleasure, particularly “Hanswurstel” and the Tyrolean Marianne. But R.’s indisposition weighs on my mind like a gray sky, and I find no salvation except in prayer, summoning up all my faith in my good star!
January 23, 1879	157	Wagner reports good composing despite a bad night, while Cosima revisits his early Nibelung materials and discusses the evolution of his mythic conception. Their talk traces the shift from antique heroic design to the deeper drama of Wotan's downfall, ending with pleasure in Keller's 'Landvogt von Greifensee.'	Thursday, January 23: R. did not have a good night, but he says he does not feel ill, and at lunch he tells me he has been “composing well.” (The day before yesterday he told me he had used a reminiscence which would touch me.) I read The Nibelung Myth and Siegfrieds Tod and talk to R. about them. Later he tells me that he originally designed this more in the mode of antiquity; then, during his secluded life in Zurich, he became interested in Wotan’s downfall; in this work he was more a kind of Flying Dutchman. I am surprised by the increased inspiration in the revised treatment of the subject and its ever growing feeling and intensity. When I tell R. of my great pleasure in the Valkyries’ scene (up to Brünnhilde), he says, “It gave me my Valkyries’ theme.” In the evening we finish the story of “Der Landvogt von Greifensee” with great enjoyment.
January 24, 1879	409	Wagner’s dental treatment begins under Dr. Jenkins, and he bears the discomfort with remarkable composure. The evening turns into a lively exchange about Germany’s political sluggishness, nationalism, emigration, and the meaning of loving a homeland, with Wagner alternating between satire and patriotic seriousness.	Friday, January 24: R.’s night was a good one, and he works. At two o’clock we receive Dr. Jenkins, who has come to examine R.’s teeth, and he starts work immediately after lunch; R. is wonderfully patient and cheerful throughout. He takes a rest, and in the evening a curious conversation develops. The excellent American is certainly surprised by present conditions in Germany, but he has no doubt that the Germans will rise splendidly to the occasion. R. says, “Yes, because we have had men like Goethe and Beethoven, but ask them what they feel about it!” He then enlarges upon the shortsightedness which has prevented efforts to bring the neighboring countries which are related to us, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, into an alliance with us. No ideas even of colonization! “The German people,” he exclaims, “that is the poor man here in our district of whom Schnappauf recently told me; he spent ten nights out in the open, and then came into a barn where there was a stove, by which he sat down. Suddenly the other people notice that his clothing is on fire; they go to put it out and discover that the man is dead.” And if Bismarck were to come here, he continues, we would all creep around on our bellies before his arrogance. When I smile skeptically at this, R. goes on: “That is to say, he would remark with such superiority, ‘Of course, my dear Herr Wagner, we have already considered all these ideas, but this wretched Empress Augusta and this what’s-his-name - so now we are going to have protective tariffs.’ And so on, till one says to him, ‘Excuse me for being such an ass as to have ideas!’ ” The speech he put in Bismarck’s mouth is so witty and so like the renowned statesman that we all burst into laughter. Dr. Jenkins tells us some very interesting things about the Negroes, whom R. can hardly visualize taking part in public affairs; he feels that what has made them significant is their touching submission to a cruel fate. Dr. Jenkins also talks about the admirable qualities of the Germans in America, and R. says, “Yes, the emigrants, those are the good ones, just as the earlier wanderers were the heroes; the ones who stayed at home were the Philistines.” When Dr. J. mentions the misfortune of having no fatherland, R. says, “Yes, where would the mourning come from, if one didn’t love it so much?”
January 25, 1879	220	He endures the painful procedure the next day and remains hospitable despite the strain, though he is clearly exhausted. Later, music and conversation lift the mood as he plays with Rubinstein and reflects on how the festival public must now be repaid for the attention it received, while also praising a tragic moment from Tristan as his finest achievement.	Saturday, January 25: R. slept well, but he does no work, and after we have had a light lunch at twelve o’clock, he undergoes the operation proper, which is painful and exhausting; he takes a rest afterward, then goes for a little walk, and we eat at 5 o’clock, when, if not as cheerful as yesterday, he is nevertheless just as hospitable. (Alone with me in the morning, he came back to the King’s letter and remarked what nice things he had said about the “Retrospect”; they reminded him of my father’s comparison with the golden bucket.) In the evening I have to take Lusch to a ball, but I return home at once, going again to fetch her later. When I come into the salon, R. is playing the American march with Herr Rubinstein; before that they had played something from the second act of Parsifal, and R. had been pleased with it. Then R. talked about his experiences with the festival, saying, “I was quite right at the time, when I said we had entertained the public and now we should have to pay for it.” To me he says in the evening, “The finest thing I have ever done is what Tristan says—‘Let me die’—with what went on before.” He is sleeping deeply when I return home at 3 o’clock.
January 26, 1879	242	After a strained social evening, the writer finds solace in Wagner’s music and in a quieter morning together. Wagner sends off Dr. Jenkins with a playful dedication and then delights in reading Xenophon aloud, especially a dialogue he finds exceptionally graceful and amusing.	Sunday, January 26: Up early, after having had to tell R. of yesterday’s “experience.” But an evening like that with all the people taking part forms a grotesque barrier between me and my inner self. All the same I am able to open my heart to the sacred tones when R. plays to me the passage from where Kundry brings the water up to Parsifal’s words, “dass heute noch als König er mich grüße.” R. says goodbye to Dr. Jenkins, after having yesterday given him the Ring des Nibelungen with a humorous dedication: Dr. J. had spoken about an art-loving Welshman, King Jen, and said his people were the “kin” of Jen, this in connection with R.’s joke that he learned his English in Wales and consequently spoke a bad dialect! A sunny winter day tempts R. out of doors, but the air does not entirely agree with him. However, when I go downstairs to greet him, I find him reading Xenophon and very cheerful; after a little while he comes up to my room and says he must read to me a dialogue which he has just finished and which he finds heavenly; he then reads aloud the conversation between Socrates and Theodota, and it really is beautiful, charming, and witty beyond all words. In the evening we read some more, but at ten o’clock I fall asleep! . . . And Burchtorff, the district president who held the ball, becomes a catchword in our home.
January 27, 1879	241	Wagner works steadily and revises a passage, while the household conversation ranges over plans for a German national theater and the failure of grand political hopes. In the evening he returns to Socratic dialogue and Mozart, praising Figaro for its wit, delicacy, and almost classical spirit.	Monday, January 27: R. had a good night, and he works; as he tells me at lunch, he spent the whole time improving a passage. He is delighted with Loldi, says she will grow up to be like me. After lunch we discuss his “Plan for a German National Theater,” which I am now reading, and R. says he “made the mistake of counting on finding efficient people.” I: “Like C. Frantz in relying on the princes to restore the German empire.” He says he will put down all his thoughts on this subject in his final articles for the Bayreuther Blätter. When he returns from his walk, he is delighted to hear Fidi singing an English song, and says his voice echoed so prettily through the house. In the evening, when friend W. and R[ubinstein] have come, R. talks about the Memorabilia and reads to us the dialogue between Socrates and Theodota and the one with the young Pericles, also the report on the death of Socrates; and afterward R. goes through the first finale from Le nozze di Figaro with Herr R., from the scene between the Count and Countess in which he opens the door. R. says, “This is Greek in spirit, with its wit and its grace.” He says it could not make an impact against the grotesqueries of Rossini, and people could not discern the melody in its light and delicate themes, so accustomed had they become to big arias.
January 28, 1879	338	The day mixes family conviviality with sharp comments about public amusements and moral decline. Wagner listens to a new letter, speaks about the disappearance of respect as a social and religious crisis, and then returns to Figaro, admiring its restrained elegance and aristocratic tone.	Tuesday, January 28: R. slept well, and he does some work; yesterday, he said, he had spent all his time working on a correction. At two o’clock a “banquet” - that is to say, our neighbors the Staffs and their family, and ourselves, a total of 18 people; it is all very cheerful and friendly, except that, when the ball is mentioned, R. betrays his disgust for this type of entertainment, saying that he knows very well how the men speak about the women. Apart from that, he is very benevolent and witty, and it makes us laugh a lot when he remarks about the new general that he seems to be less general (pointing to his head) than corporal (pointing to his body)! R. goes for a walk, then takes a little rest, and in the evening seems not at all fatigued by the children’s party - on the contrary, he speaks of it with pleasure, saying how pretty they all looked. Later a nice letter from E. Nietzsche brings the conversation around to her brother’s dismal book, and R. remarks that, when respect vanishes, everything else vanishes, too; “That is the true definition of religion; unlike Jesus Christ, I cannot be without sin, but I can respect the sinless state, can beg pardon of my ideal when I am disloyal to it. But our times have no feeling for greatness, they cannot recognize a great character. There can be no bond with it.” Then we take up Le nozze di Figaro again, from the beginning to the Countess’s first aria, which R. says is so beautiful because it does not go further than it should - an aristocratic lady at her toilette, looking at herself in the mirror and asking herself what is happening - melancholy elegance. When today he fetched me for supper, he came through my gray room and stood still on the staircase, while I waited for him downstairs in my “Maharajah” dress. I: “You are standing there like Walther von Stolzing.” He: “You have guessed my feelings exactly.”
January 29, 1879	224	Wagner sketches Kundry’s baptism and continues working, though the cold air keeps the outing short. A rehearsal of Parsifal moves him intensely, especially one vocal passage he spontaneously sings himself, and he also voices strong opinions about Beethoven and Bach, distinguishing what he finds acceptable in each.	Wednesday, January 29: R. slept well, and he works; at lunch he tells me that he has sketched Kundry’s baptism, and he hopes I shall be satisfied with it. We go for a walk together in the palace gardens but soon return home, since I feel the air is too keen. R. does some more work, and I get the impression that he has had a slight rush of blood to his head. When Herr R. comes, I go through Parsifal (Act II) with him, while R. watches us and listens. Apart from a few deficiencies of tempo and execution, we are astounded by the way Herr R. plays from the sketches. But after he has played Parsifal’s cry following the kiss, R. springs to his feet and sings this passage, in a way the world will never hear again! Reports about Rheingold in Cologne (rehearsal) make me think of the remark he made yesterday (at the “banquet”), pointing to the statuettes: “Those are my sons, they look after me, I do not concern myself with them.” Before we start on Parsifal, R. glanced at Beethoven’s C-sharp Minor Quartet and pointed to the 3rd bar in the second line; he says he finds it unpleasant, it does not sound well, altogether he finds the whole movement distasteful; when Bach does similar things, it is quite a different matter.
January 30, 1879	351	A restless night leaves Wagner reflective about old hardships and grateful for the refuge of work. The day is filled with literary reading, garden walks, and musical analysis, and he praises Mozart’s ensemble writing while also finding much to mock in the pomp of contemporary society and politics.	Thursday, January 30: R. had a tolerable night, he got up only once, after dreaming that I was startled by a noise; he went to see what it was, and as he went I called after him, “Don’t leave me!”; whereupon he: “I shall be back at once.” Waking up, he goes to his room, reads Plutarch, and finds nothing but ghosts in it, then finally the cave of Trophonios. He says, “Devil take it!,” shuts the book, and returns to bed. All this I find uncanny, for I am debating in my mind whether I shall not, in order to keep up the surprise, have to go to Munich to have my portrait painted for his birthday! R. works and tells me a canon is going around in his head, and he really does seem preoccupied. Over coffee he tells me that his greatest happiness, “which you share with me,” lies in creating, in the way it sometimes comes to him in various ecstatic moments. But one must take care then, he adds, not to do too much. R. goes out, as always these days, just into the palace gardens, which are now completely bound up with Parsifal. News of Kienzl in London. In the evening we continued with Le nozze di Figaro to the end; great delight in almost all of it. R. points out to us how, in the Count’s aria, the nobleman’s sinister contempt for the common people is expressed; then the lovely instrumentation of various entrances - the bassoon, for example, in Susanna’s “Deh vieni” aria, and the flutes in the introduction to the Count’s aria; then the splendid basses at the end, the incomparable dance, which is so characteristic, for that is what they are really like; we heard such things in Naples. In the morning he thought of his sister Klara, how beautifully she had sung the Page [Cherubino]. When I betray symptoms of a severe cold, most unusual for me, R. recalls Socrates’s daemon, which also announced its presence through sneezes, and he reminds me of the story, which I was recently told, of the wise man who turned back halfway!
January 31, 1879	392	He sleeps well and spends the day writing in ink, while the room arrangement above amuses him with its theatrical, almost sinister look. Conversation ranges from French politics to earlier compositions, and he becomes especially self-critical about his own youthful operatic work, contrasting it with the dramatic foundation he now values.	Friday, January 31: R. had a good night, that is to say, he only had to get up once. In bed he says: “How many dismal things I have lived through! When I think of those visits to Minna in Brestenburg! And how glad I then was to be by myself again and to have my work - what would I have done without that. . . ?” After lunch I tell him how much I like his introduction to the 3rd and 4th volumes (of his collected writings), which I read again today; also how pleased I am that he has given the whole edition such simple accompaniments as the introduction to Volume I. Then we talk about friend Wolzogen and his character - how nicely and how quietly he and his family arranged their move here, etc. R. goes for a walk and returns with the news of MacMahon’s resignation and the election of Grévy. Curious France, now with a sober, entirely bourgeois government! He also shows me the development of American activity in the following account: [not found]. Art and religion, depart in peace! But perhaps somewhat more truthfulness in the world. In the evening R. reads to us Plutarch’s splendid chapter about garrulity, also Socrates’s turning back on the advice of his daemon. “I so much enjoy immersing myself in this world,” he says. After that we take up Bach’s Preludes and Fugues again, after a long break: numbers 4-8 in the second book. Of the seventh R. says, “One can see the Countess from Figaro in that.” And of the 2nd of these four preludes he says, “He wanted to do something especially beautiful there.” After one of the fugues he says, “Canonic devices - they are repeated, too, so people should be able to put up with the repetitions of my Leitmotive.” Before our reading Herr R. played to us the Overture to Das Liebesverbot, in which the banning theme seems to me very good - soulless, legal, harsh, dramatic; when I say I like the Overture to Die Feen better, R. observes that the other (F.-Verb.) shows more talent. He searches out a few passages, but apart from the “Salve Regina” (Tannhäuser) he finds it all “horrible,” “execrable,” “disgusting.” It is well orchestrated, he says - “That I could do in my mother’s womb” - but the Overture is all thunder and lightning.
No diary entries found.