Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of October 25, 1874

Overview

She is under the weather and uses the children’s free day to rest, while also finishing Nietzsche’s paper. The household shifts from a bright lunch and R.’s pleasure in the children to his sour mood after the mayor interrupts him, leaving him brooding at night over work he cannot even speak about.

Content

Sunday, October 25:

R. works; I feel rather unwell and take advantage of the children’s day off work to rest and to finish Prof. Nietzsche’s fine paper. Cheerful lunch, then I sent the children to the woods. R. goes to meet them, is pleased when he sees them in their Freischütz hats, and returns home in very high spirits.

But unfortunately, when he is about to go to work, the mayor visits him, and this keeps him from his work; when I rejoin him at supper he is in a very ill humor. During the evening he complains about his work and the fact that he cannot even talk about the things which are obsessing him.