Cosima's Diaries

Saturday, March 1:

R. had a better night, got up only once, right at the beginning, but went to sleep again immediately. I dream for the second time that I have no flowers for his birthday - the first time the roses had not yet begun to bloom.

In the morning R. tells me that he considers it very important for everything to sound well, including the subsidiary voices, and that is why he likes to have a piano at hand; he is not satisfied until it all sounds right. In Beethoven there are frequently passages which sound “squeezed,” making R. say to himself: “S----- (I), if he had listened to it, he would never have written it down.”

“Stay just as you are,” he exclaims to me, “don't take anything away, and I want nothing added” - he is speaking about life. He works, and around lunchtime he fetches me and sings to me, “Du weinest, sieh, es lacht die Aue” ... Bright and sunny weather. The children are well, but at times my impressions seem to overwhelm me; after lunch I have to lie down. I come around only very gradually and write to E. Nietzsche about her brother's book.

In the evening we read the pamphlet The Victory of Judaism (in which R. very much likes the comparison between Bismarck and Constantine) - it makes me feel very melancholy! After that, we read with great enjoyment the two scenes between the student and Mephisto in Parts One and Two of Faust. We also go through some songs by R. Franz - “Du bist elend” and “Ich grolle nicht,” which Franz once asked R. to sing to him. R. enjoys the songs, and some by Schubert which we mention he finds “unutterably beautiful” (“Sei mir gegrüsst,” among others); he says that was Vienna as it used to be, the Vienna in which Beethoven lived, and an ardent, naive fellow such as Schubert was living under its influence. And then there were Strauss and Raimund as well. Now all that is gone.

Sunday, March 2:

R. again did not sleep well, and I was very worn out - I almost think it is because of my letter; R. wants to know what I have said, I tell him and am pleased by his approval. At noon he again fetches me and plays to me the wonderful transition to the bells. Then lunch, at which my reappearance is celebrated! Afterward R. goes out for quite a long walk.

In the evening conclusion of the 48 Preludes and Fugues; the B-flat major fugue, which we call the “pleading” one. R. sings to it, “Please do not be angry, please will you forgive?” and makes an imploring gesture. R. has the last prelude played quickly and with great passion; he finds it quite remarkable that Bach concludes in this way, says that the entire sonata of the future is contained in it, and at a certain passage he observes, “Tristan und Isolde cannot do that better.” Then the entrance of the Flying Dutchman, with which even R. himself is pleased; I ask for the Overture as well, and with it feel my youth sounding within me again, with everything that filled, elevated, and powerfully influenced it. I am wearing the “Scheherazade,” which gives R. pleasure, and in his usual flattering way he says, “Let the whole world see that we love each other.” Blessed in faith, blessed in love!

Monday, March 3:

R. slept well. In the morning we talk a lot more about Der fliegende Holländer, which he intends to revise slightly. When I tell him how offended I feel if people prefer one of his works to any of the others - for the same great spirit is in all of them, and each is unique and incomparable in its own way - he observes that it must be a human characteristic to be exclusive and condescending with love.

Most people, he goes on, judge things by the amount of work in them: not the beauty of the picture, but the number of colors used in painting it. “If there were still any Germans left in the world,” he says, “Der Fl. Holländer would have been bound to make an impression, for it was something new in opera - but there are no Germans.” A picture in the Illustrierte Zeitung of an opera ball in Berlin vexes R. with its princes and Jews, Prussian epaulets and moustaches; the only thing in the picture which pleases him is a Chinese man.

We come to the subject of Schiller's Wallenstein, and R. says that if one excepts Shak., as one of course always must, Schiller is the greatest dramatist. When Herr Rub. expresses the view that the episode of Thekla and Max stands outside the main action, R. explains to him in what way they are a part of it, how the catastrophe comes about when Max, supported by Thekla, abandons Wallenstein. R. says it has now become the fashion to point out weaknesses in Schiller, though still professing great respect for him.

He is very pleased with the lines about Lessing in W. Marr's pamphlet, and he talks of Lessing's journey to Italy, observing that there he must have felt as R. himself does - melancholy, solitary, alien. R. is amused by the continued success of Das Rheingold in Cologne; he says it is probably due in the main to the machinist Brandt. Much conversation in the evening with Herr Rub. about his origin and the position of the Jews.

Tuesday, March 4:

R. had a good night; he works in ink, in order, as he says, “to give you an audition soon.” At lunch, however, he feels worn out, but he goes for a long walk; I go to meet him, and we watch the most magnificent sunset. R. called out to me, “I arranged that for you.” “A while ago the orb was there, now the hero is shedding his blood.”

We play whist in the evening; R. seems to be looking rather tired, and consequently I suggest the game, which seems the right thing for him.

Wednesday, March 5:

His foot caused him pain during the night; perhaps he walked too far? Yesterday his dear cherished face looked tired, and he complained of feeling languid - is his work proving a strain?

This morning we talked about the awfulness of a certain world in which women are not respected and the most horrible things are talked about. R. says, “Until I was quite old I used to feel like a callow boy, because I knew nothing of so many things I heard about from this person or that one.” I feel that the existence of such a world turns ideal art into something ghostly, and I tell him that a sense of an unknown yet suspected perversity has always filled me with melancholy, and if I had been obliged to take note of such perversities, I think I should have been driven to suicide.

Yesterday R. told Lulu very movingly about Hans's flight to him from St. Gallen when he was in Zurich. Over our after-lunch coffee R. recalled his previous life and said to me, “In Zurich that time I should have gone away with you, but we were just like Tristan and Isolde, we didn't understand each other - 'the dream of premonition.'”

I go for a long walk with the children, R. comes to meet me, then goes to Angermann's with Fidi, greatly pleased with the boy; returning home, he works something out and plays it to me in the evening.

Thursday, March 6:

R. slept well, but he awoke very early and waited impatiently for daytime. He tells me, “When I have finished a part of my work, I ask myself, 'Will I succeed with the next?'”

Talked a lot about the Villa d'Angri, for which we have received the plans. R. is very tired of the climate here.

In the evening we chat together, R. reads me some things from his Braunes Buch, and we recall with delight our activities together. He is now reading Plutarch again, since he found little satisfaction in Gogol, in spite of his talent.

Sad feelings about French illustrations to R.'s works - appendix to the translation of Parsifal! A little volume by Daudet astonishes us with its talent - and silliness, the latter wherever the Germans are involved. R. says, “We are quite stupid and ridiculous enough, so why do they have to make themselves look ridiculous, too? They should study us closely.”

Friday, March 7:

R. had a good night, and he works. At lunch he suddenly exclaims, “That is a good idea! I must write it down at once.” We bring him a pencil and some music paper, and he writes a harmonic passage to accompany the bells. Afterward he asks me if I know what the f time means while the bells are sounding. It shows Gurnemanz and Parsifal in the act of listening; one hears the bells from a distance. He is completely absorbed in his creative work, and I am permitted to share it with him! Otherwise we talk of hardly anything except Naples.

In the evening whist with Herr Rubinstein, as always with “bids.” Watching R. as he plays, I have an indescribable feeling; I should like to take him in my arms, carry him up to Heaven, shield him from all suffering - I feel that this is my task. It is to make this life here below pleasant for him, to shield him, look after him, sustain him, that is my dearest wish - indeed, I feel it as an imperative! Yet what can I do, what lies in my power? It is he who does everything! His eyes, his cherished glance, how to bear the world without their radiance?

Saturday, March 8:

R. slept well, but he is still complaining of pressure on his chest; he feels unwell in the morning and goes out. A small lunch party in our house, cavalry and government, R. very hospitable. Then he and I go for a walk in the palace gardens and listen to the blackbirds, which, as R. says, are addressing “questions” to the air.

Yesterday he told me that he would not be able, as he had thought, to use the Romeo and Juliet theme for Titurel’s funeral; he would find a use for it in a symphony. In the evening we play whist with the children, as the enclosed pieces of paper show. Enclosed between the pages are two pieces of paper with the scores of the games, on one of which is written: “Everybody won! R. W.”

Before that R. showed me the phrase in Faust which had utterly delighted him, when Mephisto says to Faust, “Let’s think what to do.” “It is things like that so unimaginable!” He never stops admiring the way Goethe continually came back to this work and at last completed it.

Yesterday he talked about the Alps, their noble tranquillity above the tree line: “Where a blade of grass grows, there is still a place for Goethe and Schiller; but where there is nothing but stone, there we have tranquillity: it is a place for gods.”

Sunday, March 9:

R. had a disturbed night, at one point he laughs at me, for I slowly exclaim, “Now at last one knows what that is,” and then say nothing more. He works, however, and I go out with the children in fine sunshine. At lunch the news that Semper is dying in Rome; solemn feelings.

In the evening we go through the “Good Friday Music,” up to the bells, and celebrate in tears, tears of bliss, the salvation of mankind. R. is not satisfied with the piano downstairs and says merrily, “When I am upstairs, I close everything up, put on the soft pedal, and bang away at my stupid noise.” (Before Parsifal, Bach’s motet “Singet dem Herrn”)

Monday, March 10:

R. had a tolerable night, and he works. “How utterly differently one works now!” he says, recalling that he completed the sketch for Lohengrin in only six weeks. Lovely spring weather; delight in the poultry yard; in the afternoon we have a splendid walk home through the palace gardens; the earth, still covered with white snow, nevertheless sends forth its fragrance, and through the brown branches one sees the rosy blue-and-golden sky; given new life, one’s soul rejoices, feeling at one with the brightness and the fragrance.

In the evening another game; R. laughs over the fact that when I sit beside him, watching, he always has bad luck. But one thing he says grieves me: “People will say of us: They won’t last long, they are too happy.” And the fact that he takes a mourning card to write down the scores also bothers me. Such is happiness! And I feel more and more that love and a longing for death are one, as in Tristan; life can bring it only pain or worry.

Tuesday, March 11:

R. slept well, and we chat about all sorts of things at breakfast; of Christianity he says, “We lack even the rudiments of the education needed to understand such a phenomenon - we are in a state of complete barbarism.” It was the words of the requiem, which happened to fall into his hands, that evoked this remark; he pointed out to me how Jewish the words are. Our feelings of barbarism find an outlet in laughter when we contemplate “Die Wacht am Rhein,” a recently designed monument! R. works and goes for a walk in the afternoon.

In the evening Herr R. plays to us Bach’s B Minor Organ Fugue, the Prelude to which delights R.; he says that after such things one can scarcely listen to Mozart, who still has so many empty passages - only to Beethoven, for he also shunned empty passages, and we go through the C Minor Sonata. “How divine was this urge of Beethoven’s,” R. exclaims, “to pursue the simplicity of melody!” Then, regarding Bach, he says to me, “He was the culmination of the medieval world - Wolfram, the mystics, A. Dürer, Luther; after that a completely new world begins, the world of the sonata, the aria, which has also produced some fine things.” (Yesterday he praised Hans’s Nirwana very highly and recommended it to Rubinstein’s attention.)

Wednesday, March 12:

R. slept well, and he works. Unfortunately the weather is so rough and stormy that one can feel it even inside the house. News of the wretchedness of the German people and reports of the tariff negotiations fill him with great bitterness, to which he gives vent in the evening in a description of the “frivolous manner” in which Bismarck is dealing with the matter; he wants money, R. says, and so he gives the Reichstag carte blanche, telling them, “Please choose whatever you want to put a tax on, we shall tax even bread and salt if you like, but only a small, a very small tax, so that people don’t notice it.” “And the whole nation is dying off, and we maintain a huge army to defend this dead body.”

I suggest a game, because it hurts me to hear him talking thus: “What can one do but turn away with a shrug of the shoulders, not bother oneself with it any more?” Even the “swan,” which I was wearing today, could not divert him from his sad thoughts, though he gazed at me with pleasure for a while.

Thursday, March 13:

R. had a good night, and when I tell him about my reading with the children (Alexander the Great) he says, “Yes, there is something so clear, so pure, about such figures; our great men seem so unclean, so blurred - Heaven knows why.” I feel the great German emperors should be excepted, and he agrees with me. He tells me what Plutarch says about the absent-mindedness of Archimedes, who would draw figures on his leg with the oil with which he was being anointed; this reminds R. of his own absent-mindedness and preoccupation.

A lunch party, the infantry in our house; R. says gaily at table that we ought now to hold a Piccolomini banquet and oblige the officers to pledge themselves to the art of the future! In the evening to the Wolzogen house, a game of whist. But he was dissatisfied with his work today.

Friday, March 14:

R. slept well, does some work, and is satisfied with it. Toward evening I hear him playing Tristan, and when I go down, he says, “I wanted to entice you down; if you only knew how I talk to myself and tell myself how happy I now am!”

As we sit down to supper he says, “You, children, are a part of our happiness” - with that radiant kindness so unique to him. Then he laughs. “So you can see how creative work and life belong together: in former days I wrote Tristan, now I am writing funeral music,” he exclaims. “Poets alone he understands, who once has lived in poets’ lands.” When Herr R. comes in the evening, we go through Tristan, Act 3, from the curse on love to Isolde’s death, to the end, and I feel as if I could never stop, were I to begin to say what this work reveals to me! ... R. tells me that for him the loveliest moment is when the theme enters three times with muted horns and violins, as Isolde’s only response to the sympathy of the others.

Saturday, March 15:

R. had a good night, and he works. Today we celebrate the recovery of our friend Wolz., and after lunch Herr Rub. plays his arrangement of “Wotan’s Farewell.” At one point - I forget where - R. says, “That always pleases Lesimple so much,” an interjection which utterly disturbed my mood for a while!

But then he plays to us the crowning of Parsifal and Kundry’s tears, and it echoes inside me like an eternal blessing; I see Tristan full of yearning, stretched out on his bed, and hear sublime consolation, deepest peace. In the evening games, ending, however, with a deep, deep sorrow which Lulu causes me.

Sunday, March 16:

R. had a restless night, but he recovers in the morning and goes to his work. Toward noon he plays to me the passage in which Titurel is carried in. After lunch we go for a walk in lovely sunshine. R. tells me things from Plutarch about the painter Nicias and others.

In the evening he reads to us the 19th canto from the Odyssey, the first conversation between Penelope and Odysseus, and does it in so sublimely moving a way that I shed tears, as if over a tragedy.

Monday, March 17:

R. did not have an entirely good night, but better than the previous one, and he works; decides, however, not to complete Parsifal until a nice spring day. The weather is still raw, and he feels it severely. In the evening we go through Beethoven quartets, the Scherzo of the E flat and the Große Fuge.

(Recently Herr Rub. played to us Weber’s Invitation to the Dance, and R. was really astonished that the interpretation of even this simple piece went astray, a piece his sister Klara, for instance, could do quite well. He laughs at the ending, so typical, he says, of the cold manner in which a modern dancer takes leave of his partner after their passionate cavorting!)

Tuesday, March 18:

Again not a good night; R. wandered about and took out Goethe’s poems to look up a phrase in “Stirbt der Fuchs, so gilt der Balg.” “With us sought to play” delights him, and in the morning he reads the charming poem to me.

In spite of his restless night, however, R. does some work. He goes for a walk in the afternoon, and in the evening we play whist—he, Lusch, Bonus, and I. And when the day is done, there flows between us the stream of love that never dries up.

Wednesday, March 19:

R. had a good night, and he works. He goes for a walk in the morning, wants to meet us since we are also going out, but my steps lead me to a sickbed (Melanie Staff) which may become a deathbed. I have to tell R. about my sad impressions, and the children weep many tears over their little playmate. A gloomy day, lit by bright sunshine and greeted by the trilling of larks! R. sees the first shoots.

He is worn out in the evening, and the thought that I may have caused him suffering is so unbearable that it turns into concern for his health, which then finds refuge in prayer.

“Oh, thou great force who created him, who wished him to be, let, oh, let him remain, desire his presence here below!”

Thursday, March 20:

The night was restless to start with, but later on it was all right. When I come from my bath, R. sings, “If a man will not let you sleep,” and moves on to the words of Die Schweizerfamilie.

At lunch a toast to Boni, whom R. addresses and congratulates with all his deep sincerity, recalling my sister, my feelings for her, the meeting in Reichenhall at which R. was present. He says he was also yearning, seeking someone to whom he could yield utterly and say, “Come with me, to Hell with everything else!” “But I always found everything—all the tables—already booked!”

[Added in margin: “Yesterday, in connection with the scarlet fever, he thought of Friederike Meyer, who behaved toward him ‘with very great nobility.’ ”] Before that he recalls his visit to Berlin shortly after Boni’s birth, when he proposed a drive, which I accepted: “You were always smiling beneath your tears,” he tells me in a touching voice, then adds gaily, “Very interesting!”

R. goes for a long walk (as far as the Students’ Wood) but returns home not entirely content; he has a great longing for the South. Impressions from the outside world are also not calculated to raise one’s spirits, and in connection with the Szegedin catastrophe he says bitterly, “It does not go far enough for me—something terrible is needed to bring people to their senses, to make them think seriously.” In the evening he reads to me passages from Plutarch about religion (in the conversation about Epicurus), and we have to admire this author’s fine way of saying the right things, and with what noble reason, as R. points out, he steers a path between the utilitarianism the English employ to protect religion and the ferocity which destroys it. We are particularly pleased with the sentence “Few fear God, so that it would be better for them not to fear him,” and what comes after that.

At lunch R. said that he would allow himself plenty of time to complete Parsifal, this final realization of a series of images which had arisen in his mind. He says he does not believe he will presume to create anything more that is new; the symphonies are different, but he wants to complete everything in peace and contentment. Before supper he comes up to my room, talks to me about the “elegy,” and says he would like to play it to me; and he does so—this unique elegy, the process within Parsifal’s soul when he becomes once again “an ordinary mortal” before he becomes a king. . . . “You have no idea of all the things in it,” he says. I: “I believe I have.” He: “Yes, of course.” Before that he said he could not understand how they did it, those composers who wrote one thing quickly after another, like Raff and Rubinstein “and others as well.” “But their work shows it.”

Friday, March 21:

Not a very good night for R. The Battle of Torgau, which he dreamed I had put into a pastry, caused him trouble. But he soon recovers in the morning.

When we separate, each to his daily task, he exclaims, “There is always separation,” and this remark awakens in my soul the feeling, always slumbering there, that lovers can only, like Tristan und Isolde, long for death, since life means separation, not just the world!

When R. left me yesterday, I scrutinized his picture and recalled the look he gave me; when he came back to me, I told him how foolish people were to maintain that possession, union, deprives love of some of its ecstasy. He laughs and says: “That never applies to us!”

The bells are causing him difficulty, since he has too many alternatives and is still uncertain which to choose. In the evening he is content to play a little whist, but then we celebrate Bach’s birthday with fugues from the 48 Preludes and Fugues and with Parsifal’s entrance into the Temple, up to the appearance of Titurel’s body.

Once again R. stresses that this will be his last work; he says he will write the words of Die Sieger when he is very old, “and then Fidi can set it to music.” Today, before having that feeling of separation in life, we talked about Gretchen in Faust; R. went into rhapsodies about the beauty of the ending to Part One, how she, full of her love for him, takes leave of him in order to assume for his sake a higher calling. Did Goethe plan his final ending? We are inclined to believe that he did.

Saturday, March 22:

Still a raw wind, bringing R. a cough and tightness in the chest and an ever-increasing yearning for the South. He works.

Returning from a fairly long walk with the children, I tell R. what a curious impression the theater made on me in the bright sunshine—exhortation, consolation, reproach, hope—which of these, or all of them together? R. says, “Sad.”

This leads us, goodness knows how, to the Sistine Chapel. I remember quite clearly R. saying to me as we entered it, “This is no place for lightheartedness—it is like my theater.” R. says no, his first feeling had been one of great repugnance, though he had gradually tried, “for your sake,” to be fair to the artist. I stick up for my memory and say that I had been so struck that he had at once seen through all the drawbacks—the disharmony of the building and its decorations, the ravages of time, the absurdity of the task—and felt warmly for the artist who had used even these poor conditions as a stepping-stone for his flight; in the same way that here one had been able to grasp his ideas in spite of Unger, Niemann, Doepler, and many others, he himself grasped Michelangelo’s genius. But he disputes this! ...

He goes out, attempts a walk in the palace gardens, but is scared off by the raw air and goes to Angermann’s with Fidi, pleased by the boy’s intelligence. On his return home he tells me that he fell flat on his face near the post office; he counters my alarm by saying that he always falls safely, he cannot forget how he once fell down on the Brühl in Vienna, Porges and the others thought, “The master is dead,” but he had not even hurt himself. I leave him at about eleven in the evening to fetch Lusch from a party; on my return I find him awake; he was looking at the Illustrirte Zeitung and showed me the King of the Zulus, who pleased him very much with his finery and his melancholy face. Then he told me that he had written to the conductor Steinbach, having read that he had given Die Meistersinger in Mainz without cuts, but there had been no audience even for the first performance.

Yesterday, before we began to play cards, the vision of Nietzsche’s behavior rose once more in his mind. He said, “N. wrote his thoughts out of season, thus acknowledging that what he admires does not belong in our time but goes beyond it, and now he uses the fact that my enterprise is out of season to criticize it! Can one imagine anything worse than that?” R. connects a remark by Herr Lindau the journalist with his description (“Retrospect”); this gentleman, it seems, has said, “Better to be bad than to be bored.” R. finds this very typical—in Paris they had also said (about Tannhäuser): “Nous voulons nous amuser, nous ne voulons pas de récit” [“We want to be entertained, we do not want recitals”].

Sunday, March 23:

“For all guilt is avenged on earth.” With these words R. comes to me from his bath; a curious experience is responsible for this quotation. Yesterday our friends Gross and Feustel held a soirée, and it seemed that an invitation to Lusch could not be refused without giving offense; since there was no mention of dancing, I arranged for her to drive there with Frau Feustel and to spend the night at her house.

Since R. did not think this proper, he first declared that he himself would go, then in the end I did. We sent Lusch off with Frau F. at 8, and I promised to be there at 10:30; but as the moment of separation approached, R. became more and more disgruntled, and his vexation fastened on the child: he said she did not belong here. I believe that in earlier days I should have been deeply offended and utterly cast down, but the god of love permitted me to discern only R.’s distress over the fact that on the heights on which we dwell we can still be reached now and again by the common herd. I was very sad, but before my departure I was able to embrace him with a pure heart, and when, at one o’clock, I find him waiting for me, reading, he has calmed down completely.

But he did not have a good night, he does not do much work, and he complains of pressure on his chest; he says it is as if something were constantly possessing him. R. relates to me the biography of the Zulu King, the killing of the cows when his mother died, so that the animals might know what it means to lose a mother, and he ends with the words: “No animal is as cruel as a human being, it is only the human being who takes pleasure in tormenting; the cat playing with a mouse does not know what this means to the mouse, but a human being does know.” He also talks about the military organization of the Zulus and says one can almost find in them the raw beginnings of the Lycurgian constitution.

Snow flurries, but R. goes out anyway (though only into the garden). In the evening a visit from our friend Feustel, questions concerning the tariffs and a good answer, to the effect that the extreme need of the German people demands such measures at this moment. After that a six-part fugue and the “Chromatic Fantasy” by Bach, kindly played by Herr Rub. at my request. Great delight in it; R. says Bach still belongs to the Reformation, to Luther, rounding that period off; then came something quite different, which could be equated with Goethe and Schiller, etc.

Monday, March 24:

R. had a good night; letters about Naples and the Villa d’Angri are becoming somewhat problematic. R. works. He also attempts a walk, but the weather is so raw he is very upset and vexed by it. The Steinway grand piano returns to us equipped with a “pulsator” and delights us with its splendid tone. It is christened with the strains of Parsifal; a merry episode in the evening as we search for the name of the English composer Wallace and, after constantly renewed searches, at last find it.

R. showed us the picture of the Zulu King and thought of Wallace among the cannibals (Berlioz’s Soirées d’orchestre). He says Wallace was a Wagnerian.

When I talked of Frau v. Hülsen, saying that in the final act of Tristan und Isolde she was reminded of “the pretty evening star,” R. says the trouble is that people can never call things by their proper names, and that is what matters. The princes, for example, such as the Grand Duke of Baden, who had held out hopes to him of grandiose schemes which never came to anything—he could not mention their names without employing the language of the gutter; but mere hints were not enough, one must name names—Lasker, for example, once reduced Roon to complete silence by mentioning names, though in that case Lasker was playing a treacherous game.

From Parsifal: the consecration of the King and the meadow, then R. looks for his new sketches and plays to us the responses up to Amfortas’s first outburst. He feels that his interpretations from the penciled sketches cannot have made things clear to us, but when I go to him upstairs, as he is putting the pages away, I tell him what a wonderful picture they had conjured up, how lifeless these singing and marching knights seemed, the whole thing working on one like a ghostly parade, until the tender and sorrowful laments of Amfortas enter suddenly like a living experience and move one profoundly. R. observes that I am the only person who could get such clear impressions from these “muddled pages”—ah, it is the inspiration of being permitted to follow him that gives me the power to do it! . . . [Added below: “R. tells Herr Rub. that the art lay in playing the seconds in the bass heavily, like the very footsteps of the knights bearing the casket.”]

Tuesday, March 25:

R. complains of tightness in the chest, and the weather is cold. He works, but nothing comes to him, he says, except a few bits and pieces, among them a scherzo theme for a symphony. He goes out in the afternoon, discovers that the Bayreuther Blätter has arrived, and when I come down to supper, he embraces me in great excitement; Glasenapp’s article and the reports of the growth of the Society have moved him greatly and instilled in him a sense of obligation, since nothing like this has ever happened before.

He remains in this state of excitement all evening and is also preoccupied with his composing. I do not know how he suddenly comes to the idea—though of course in a joking way—that Fidi may turn out to be a practical man of the world, who will find his papa and his mama terribly old-fashioned. If that were to be the case, all the papers would have to be left to one of the girls.

But R. adds that it is a good thing Fidi has not yet betrayed any signs of knowing what sort of person his father really is.

Wednesday, March 26:

The weather still cold. R. had a tolerable night in spite of a bad dream, brought about by a cat in the palace gardens which climbed swiftly onto a tree stump and from there triumphantly mocked the dogs; in it I was cold toward him (my father always behind it), and he had been the barking dog! All the same, he works. After lunch we talk a lot about Phocion, and R. remarks how decadent periods suddenly produce such men, whose greatness and strength become even greater and more noble precisely on account of the decline. Yesterday he told Rubinstein that what he needed was a Peabody to leave him a large sum of money in his will.

In the evening he writes a few lines to friend Wolzogen about the third issue, and since the latter at once comes over to the house, he is rewarded with some music making: the first act of Tristan. R. says with a laugh that people will later think our era must have been a strange one, when one could offer the public works like that. In fact, he says, he has produced nothing new since Tristan, whereupon I observe that even from a technical point of view Die Meistersinger, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung contain new ideas. But what he meant was that there had been no need for him to write a single note more; he could just have said, “Do it as I do.” So he thinks!

Thursday, March 27:

R. was somewhat restless during the night, and our home is not filled with music today. He writes to the King, and over coffee he says to me that there is something artificial about these letters, and he has feelings of shame and injustice toward me when he indulges in such dithyrambs toward another person; his situation and the King’s own letters are to blame for it. I reply that in earlier times I had perhaps been hurt by the feeling that truthfulness was being made to yield to fiction, also hurt by the extravagance of expression, but now all I could do was to suffer and rejoice with him (I do not put it quite like this—much shorter!).

I review in my heart all the things which have ever caused me pain, and the shadows melt in the sunshine of love, which is matched today by real sunshine outside. We all go out, but unfortunately the wind is still very keen, and we soon return home.

R. completes his letter and tells me what he has said in it: that being engaged in completing a work is pleasant, but not its final completion—and people already have enough things to spoil! The enclosed report [not found], from which I tell him only our good friend Lesimple’s deed, gives him great pleasure.

The advertisement I read to him over our afternoon coffee rouses him to send the parson a telegram, asking the price of the cow. Answer: half its value would be sufficient! . . . Now R. is writing. In the evening we begin Carlyle’s essay on Cagliostro, which we find very gripping; R. was so pleased with the introduction that he decided to read it with me.

Friday, March 28:

Last night it was my turn to dream a sad dream, and it was about R. I tell it to him, and at lunch he says he was so affected by the thought of having been nasty to me that he could write no music, but sought some literary activity instead. He took up his Art and Politics, but this, instead of restoring him, made him angry about all the things he had already said and must now keep on saying all over again! But the sad mood induced by my dream had finally led him back to Amfortas’s sufferings. (He is not pleased with Dr. Schemann’s article in the third issue; he says he would have been able to write his drama just as well even if Wolfram’s poem had never existed - from a book of folk tales, like Tannhäuser.) Something must arouse his anger before he can write literary pieces.

R. goes out in the afternoon, and in the evening we finish Carlyle’s sketch about Cagliostro, with much enjoyment, after R. has told me some very amusing things from Tappert’s newspaper.

Saturday, March 29:

“South wind, south wind!” I hope it is spring at last! ... At breakfast R. and I discuss the positioning of Titurel’s catafalque and decide that it should be placed high up in the arch from which Titurel’s voice is heard in the first act, thus leaving the middle of the stage free for Amfortas’s outburst, Parsifal’s act of healing, and the blessing.

Yesterday R. played to me a theme he brought back from the palace gardens (“which now contain much of me”) - for a symphony. Today he asked me jokingly how long I thought he would continue to be productive: “I still want to write symphonies,” he says. In the evening we read with much enjoyment about Cagliostro, or, rather, the story of the necklace; but for Carlyle’s philosophy, the “Maker” which frequently peeps through, we do not much care.

Sunday, March 30:

R. had a tolerable night and goes to his work, wanting to see whether the rhetorical and dramatic part will suit the symphony. (Yesterday he was in Angermann’s with Friedel and Jus Staff and was very pleased with our son!) In the afternoon he takes the girls and Friedel for a walk, goes a long way, but has trouble with the dogs and a cat. In the evening a whist party at Frau v. Schoeler’s.

Monday, March 31:

R. was somewhat restless during the night, but he works and goes for a walk in the garden before lunch. I occupy myself with the Sistine Chapel, showing the children the lovely photographs of it. R. casts a glance over it and says I am right to admire it.

In the evening we finish the necklace story, though R. does not permit me to finish reading C.’s speech at the end, finding it distasteful. We conclude the evening with Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and the Adagio from Haydn’s C Major Symphony, which strikes us as quite divine.