Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of July 8, 1874

Overview

Another violent storm makes the house feel precarious, but the arrival of the conductor Doppler shifts the day toward musical and Viennese reminiscence. R. grows expansive about politics and war, imagining grand historical causes, and the evening with Götterdämmerung is colored by a dream in which even my presence becomes strangely disputed.

Content

Wednesday, July 8:

Severe thunderstorm in the morning; it felt as if Wahnfried would collapse.

Visit from the conductor Doppler from Vienna. R. discusses his Viennese experiences. Regarding the present state of affairs, it is said that the Jesuit university in Lille is now to be built in great splendor, R. says, 'I should like to see Bismarck start a war with France just on account of the Jesuits. That would be a war for an idea, something like the war in America with the Southern states, though of much greater significance.'

In the evening the musicians, along with Doppler, Götterdämmerung. R. dreamed that I was sitting in a theater with him and making remarks which the actors heard and answered with such scorn that I had to leave, while R. was wondering, 'Is this really Cosima?' But he recognized me from my...