Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of February 27, 1879

Overview

R. rests better, works after breakfast, and reads Gogol before starting his day. He is gloomy about the absence of close relationships, and the conversation turns to spiritualism and philosophy, which he treats as familiar modern questions already illuminated by Schopenhauer.

Content

Thursday, February 27:

R. had a tolerable night. We breakfast “like an eagle with two heads,” and he then goes to his work. His reading matter before starting work is Gogol's short stories. Yesterday evening he wrote to Herr Levi to thank him for his kindness to me.

Arrival of a pamphlet by Herr Marr, The Victory of Judaism, containing views which are, alas, very close to R.'s. R., who went out today as well, is in a very melancholy mood: “This lack of relationships!” he exclaims. When I tell him about Prof. Zöllner and the spiritualist medium Slade, he says this is the modern, realistic way of approaching a subject, which Schopenhauer has already so beautifully explained.