Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of February 11, 1872

Overview

The day is spent around Wagner's work and his reflections on God, faith, and Isolde, which he links to immortality and to the spiritual force of music. He is unwell and bothered by the coal fire, though he still corrects proofs and keeps working. In the evening she reads Schopenhauer to him, and he explains how his ideas about the relation between words, music, and drama have been misunderstood.

Content

Sunday, February 11:

“What is God, is there a God? The answer is, ‘A mighty fortress’ - that is God; and the apotheosis of Isolde is immortality. What is faith? The ‘Pilgrims’ Chorus’ from Tannhäuser.”

He works, but is not well; he finds the coal fire unpleasant, the fumes upset him. In the afternoon he corrects proofs; in the evening I read Schopenhauer to him.

Of Opera and Drama, which he is correcting, he says: “I know what Nietzsche didn’t like in it - it is the same thing which Kossak took up and which set Schopenhauer against me: what I said about words. At the time I didn’t dare to say that it was music which produced drama, although inside myself I knew it.”