Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of January 5, 1870

Overview

The day combines children’s lessons, literary reading, and Richard’s philosophical reflections on life as a perilous field only the rare person can master. Cosima also records frustration over the stalled divorce proceedings. Richard frames the contrast between living love and slow-moving law with bitter wit, turning a practical anxiety into a larger meditation.

Content

Wednesday, January 5:

Worked with the children. At lunch R. speaks about life, which is like the flickering flames eternally raging around Brünnhilde's rock. Now and again someone breaks through these flames and tames them, but most come to grief in them.

In the evening Tristram Shandy. Letter from both the Schurés, very nice. With regard to my divorce, which is making no progress, R. says, "Laws are transmitted," etc. "Nature and love are prompt, but laws, they creep on all fours!"