Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of January 15, 1870

Overview

Cosima and Richard reflect on ancient and medieval images of death, linking Lessing, Isolde, German imagination, and Greek feeling. The children’s better health permits an outing, though Richard remains physically limited and unable to work much. The springlike weather and the completion of Theaetetus give the day a gentler close.

Content

Saturday, January 15:

I tell R. that Lessing's essay on the way in which the ancient Greeks depicted Death had been very vivid in my mind during the morning; it had reminded me of his Isolde, who, as she puts out the torch, appears to us in the smiling guise of loving heroine and goddess of Death simultaneously.

Talked of the medieval skeleton; R. observes that the Germans had managed to give even this gruesome image a cheerful and homely aspect, which is what makes "the Germans so original and closest in kind to the Greeks."

The children in better health, I can take them for a drive, Boni and Loldi. After lunch went out with R.; he is not well and was not able to do much work. Springlike weather. In the evening the conclusion of Theaetetus. Letter from M. Maier.