Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of February 1, 1874

Overview

She welcomes the end of a painful month with the hope that a new one may bring relief, even while knowing that some forms of sorrow simply do not change with time. The day circles around the limits of representation as they visit the photographer, compare photography to science and painting to philosophy, and end in cold weather, a short walk, and a thoughtful reading on the Greeks.

Content

Sunday, February 1:

Farewell, January, with all your sorrow and pain! It is good the way one divides up time, for then one says to oneself: This month was bad, the next will be better; but there is also a kind of experience that alters nothing.

Today to the photographer's! R. can scarcely be painted, how can one photograph him? Conversing about it, we decide that photography's claim to replace painting is like that of science to replace philosophy.

I gaze upon the Brussels portrait of R. and say to him, “What fills me with melancholy is that in it your eyes never seek mine.” “They are not seeking anything,” he replies. “For me the world is completely dead.”

A walk in the afternoon, the weather is cold, and R. loses patience. We return home. In the evening Fr. Schlegel's book on Greeks and Romans, read with interest the chapter on Diotima.