Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of October 2, 1875

Overview

She totals up the quarterly household spending and is alarmed by the amount, while R. tries to keep the morning productive by reading Parsifal and warning that the day will bring fresh obstacles. The list of burdens keeps growing: treasury demands, Voltz and Batz, theater negotiations, costly costumes, and the returning dogs with mange, all against the backdrop of a looming need for 50,000 florins. Later, after a visit from Briickwald and Schulz, they turn to Beethoven and political outrage alike, with R. speaking bitterly about the Turkish crisis and even wishing for Russian control of Constantinople.

Content

Saturday, October 2:

While R. is in conference, I go through my books, write down what was spent during the last quarter, and am alarmed by the sum of 8,200-odd florins.

After we had breakfasted, R. read me the fine chapter about Trevrizent in Parsifal and said we must make good use of the morning, since the daytime would bring nothing but difficulties, and truly the worries are piling up. The agreement with the royal treasury, Voltz and Batz, the household expenses, the opera director Scherbarth, who is not willing to release Herr Unger, in the background Herr Fiirstner, before us Vienna, with the 'one-eyed Swedish Jew' as Tannhäuser, as R. says; on top of that our dogs sent back to us by the director in Zahna with mange; everywhere fraud, when it is not stupidity. R. says when people come and congratulate him on his energy, his genius, he feels like flying into a rage.

Sunday, October 3:

R. had a bad night full of alarming dreams. He has to reply to Herr Scherbarth, the theater director. I have an interview with friend Gross; a sum of 50,000 florins will soon become imperative, but where to find it? Doepler must have money for the costumes, and Brandt and the engineer and Heaven knows who else are also demanding money.

In the evening, visit from the architect Briickwald, Prof. Schulz, and his wife; we go through the 8th Symphony in my father's fine arrangement; at the second theme of the finale R. exclaims: 'Here comes Galathea! Then the dolphins and the ocean creatures, gamboling, making an uproar, and squabbling.' The ending of Parsifal causes us to observe how few consummate masterpieces there are, practically only the Beethoven symphonies. R. reads us the complaint of the Herzegovinians to the embassies and talks heatedly about the scandal of this Turkish business. He wishes the Russians were in possession of Constantinople.