Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of October 23, 1877

Overview

R. suffers another miserable night with abdominal discomfort, chills, and a cold, though he still manages some morning work. He then writes at length to Dr. Eiser about Nietzsche’s condition, and the evening ends with Wolzogen reading the preface to his translation of Bacchae.

Content

Tuesday, October 23:

R. again had a wretched night; abdominal troubles. He reads Darwin’s The Descent of Man and feels cold. I cannot say how sad it makes me to see him, at the start of his great work, so hindered by bodily ailments. However, he works in the morning.

In the afternoon he writes a long letter to Dr. Eiser in Frankfurt, who had sent a detailed report about our friend Nietzsche’s state of health. R. says, “He (N.) is more likely to listen to the friendly advice of a medical man than to the medical advice of a friend.”

In the evening friend Wolzogen reads us the preface to his translation of Euripides’s Bacchae.