Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of June 8, 1874

Overview

The children spend time with Richter while domestic tensions and practical worries press in around the house. In the evening music opens the door to a grief so deep that memory of a dead friend overwhelms the whole performance, and the loss is felt alongside a protective refusal to shape R. into a more conventional person.

Content

Monday, June 8:

The children play a lot with Richter. We have domestic difficulties and I many worries. Sketches from Hoffmann, who has at last made the alterations! R. works.

The musicians come in the evening, and the third act of Siegfried is gone through; during it I think with unutterable melancholy of my dead friend, how none had ever listened to and breathed in these sounds as she had, and none had loved me as she had. I really would like R. to write about her, but I do not intend to exhort him; if he were to adopt my views on life, how could he ever create?