Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of October 10, 1877

Overview

At breakfast R. explained the struggle behind a musical passage and how he had finally found the right form for it. The day also marked twenty-four years since their first meeting, and the evening ended in amused contempt for clumsy literary imitators.

Content

Wednesday, October 10:

At breakfast R. says to me: “When you receive the next page, you will see that I have had a lot of trouble with it; I wanted a somewhat drawn-out triple time for Amfortas’s procession, so as to make the words of Gurnemanz fit. No artificial idea is of any help at such times, for it should all sound as if it must be like this and nothing else. But I have found it now.”

I remind R. that it is 24 years since we first saw each other. In the afternoon R. continues writing out his copy, and in the evening we converse with our pleasantly educated and well-informed friend; our talk leads us to the Nibelungen of Geibel and of Hebbel. R. reads some passages from them amid great hilarity, and we find it hard to overcome our amazement that such products are not banished with scorn and contumely from the realms of German literature.