Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of September 15, 1873

Overview

R. finally returns to his score, though he is frustrated by the lack of a pen he likes. She spends the day writing family and correspondence letters and completes this notebook, hoping it will preserve a picture of their life for their son Siegfried. They speak tenderly of the future, of R.’s wish not to obstruct his son, and of the hope that the festivals will allow a freer life for the next generation. The entry closes with prayer, a new beginning for the diary, and an evening of Tristan and Uhland that leaves them deeply moved.

Content

Monday, September 15:

At last R. gets down again to his score, though he still has no pen which he likes. I write to my father, sending back the scores, to my mother, to the Englishman who sent a fine translation of Die Walkiire, and so on, and complete this book. Written always in haste and without leisure, it does, I believe, contain a picture of our life, which I want to be able to give my son Siegfried, along with all the opinions of his father. We hope things will go better for him. “I am quite content to be the Siegmund,” R. said today, and he is glad he is old enough not to become an impediment to his son. “If I can do the festivals, and if they lead to the consequences I expect, he will be able to lead a truly Periclean existence.” I want him to recognize his father truly, to know everything about him, and that is why I continue with these pages: through these he may learn what his father will not perhaps be able to say himself. My blessings on him and his sisters!

[End of the sixth notebook of the Diaries.]

Dear God, make me devout, that I may go to Heaven; but if I do not become devout, take me away from this earth, take me into Thy celestial kingdom, make me be like Thine angels. This volume shall begin with Fidi’s prayer, the same one which R. spoke in his childhood, and I hope that Fidi’s children will all speak it, too.

In the afternoon a sitting with our good P. Pietz, who R. says has made him downright happy with the lovely bust he has made of me. Wretched state of the trades here, not a molder to be found. R. is thinking of suggesting a vocational school with workshops, under a commission which would look after the orders. The worker here is constantly drunk.

In the evening we take up Uhland again; after the reading R. plays the third act of Tristan, the bliss of melancholy, the desolation of the sea, profound calm, nature’s sorrow, nature’s consolation, all, all here in this most wonderful of poems! When I speak of it to R., he says, “In my other works the motives serve the action; in this, one might say that the action arises out of the motives.” When I tell him I should like to die to these strains, he says, “But better to the strains with which Siegfried dies.”