Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of June 16, 1880

Overview

R. was fully restored, dictated cheerfully to Cosima while joking about posterity, and spent the day arguing over Bismarck, Jesuits, Jews, and the shallowness of men obsessed with appointments rather than freedom. The mood softened in the vineyards with the children and culminated in a deeply moving evening when he played the third act of Tannhäuser for them, leaving Cosima in tears.

Content

Wednesday, June 16:

Happy, cherished day! R. is well; at breakfast we continue talking about the pictures. And at 11 o’clock he calls me in to dictate to me, making jokes throughout about our work for posterity.

At lunch conversation about Bismarck, who now wants to throw out the Catholic party, lock, stock, and barrel, since the Pope will not place it at his disposal, though he would have been willing to make all sorts of concessions to the Pope. The only condition would be that they support him in everything. But the Jesuits say they prefer to be martyrs.

The unveiling of the Goethe monument also provides us with entertainment, the Emperor was present at it, and the monument has been raised on borrowed money, for the full sum has not yet been collected. R. is vexed by requests for conducting positions: “Always appointments! They have nothing in their heads except appointments! And my whole strength lies in having kept myself free. With such people I am supposed to found a school!” Regarding Bismarck’s rage against the Catholics, R. says, “The matter is one between Jesuits and Jews; they sit at the two ends like the hedgehogs in the fairy story, and the hare (ourselves) wears itself out.” He is invited to sign a petition to the Reich Chancellor demanding emergency laws against the Jews. He does not sign it: he says (1) he has already done what he can; (2) he dislikes appealing to Bismarck, whom he now sees as irresponsible, just following his own caprices; (3) nothing more can be done in the matter.

We walk to the vineyards with the children and settle down in the belvedere beside the pine trees. Telegrams from Genoa! In the evening R. offers to play Tannhäuser to the children, and they rush from the terrace, as if touched by a magic wand, to arrange the room. “They are a part of it all,” R. exclaims to me in his gratification, then adds jokingly, “I have gripped them in the only way I can.” He plays the 3rd act, up to Tannhäuser’s narration, and indescribable emotion takes possession of me, bringing forth warm tears.