Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of November 9, 1872

Overview

A favorable letter from Hoffmann gives R. some encouragement, even though criticism of him remains widespread. Conversation with the dean and the speaker turns to hostility from the princes, German musical style, and the exhausting difficulties of getting Lohengrin staged in Berlin. Nietzsche’s news that all his students have abandoned him because of his book shocks them both and deepens the sense that their circle is being shut out. By evening they are talking of impossible strategies and political intervention, yet the visit from the mayor and his wife ends the day on a kinder social note.

Content

Saturday, November 9:

Yesterday, R. had a good letter from Herr Hoffmann; although a number of people have a number of objections to him, R. continues to favor him, considering him to be an earnest man.

When the dean was speaking yesterday of the opposition to R., the latter said, "Whether I shall succeed, God knows; my mission, like that of Goethe's Egmont, is to set an example." "The reason the princes are so hostile to me is that previously they behaved badly toward me, and now, since I have not been silenced, they hate me." At that the dean quoted a Latin saying: "It is strange that we hate those whom we have hurt."

This morning I told R. that even among broken-down Italian singers I had detected a stylishness of execution, of phrasing, such as I had never encountered among Germans. "You can believe me," says R., "that is the foreign influence: execution evolves out of the words, and our singers are always singing the most horrible of translations, are therefore unable to develop a stylish execution; one might say that, because they sing Don Giovanni in German, they can no longer sing Die Zauberflöte." I tell him about my shock when I heard the famous Mme Schumann play, the unstylishness of the execution! "Yes," says R., "for the theater spreads its influence everywhere."

R. is working out, without making a preliminary draft, a letter for the Kassel actor's almanac; the effort tires him. Letter from Marie Schl., describing the difficulties of getting Lohengrin performed in Berlin! A letter to R. from Prof. Nietzsche, who reports that this semester every one of his students has stayed away! And so he has been excommunicated on account of his book; the news affects us very deeply, for it is a very serious matter and puts our friend in an impossible situation.

We start thinking up extravagant ideas and plans for sending students to Basel; of forcing from Bismarck an appointment in Berlin, all kinds of impossibilities. R. also has hopes that his journey might yield something: "This is a case where the aristocracy could intervene."

We are literally being outlawed; yesterday the dean told us that one of the precepts of the Catholic party is that its members must speak against Wagner and Bayreuth. I told R. I believed that we had now entered a particularly bad phase as far as the outside world was concerned. He laughs and says, "Oh, it is always bad."

In the evening the mayor and his wife, good and fine people.