Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of September 2, 1880

Overview

R. woke from a confused dream about forgetting my birthday, and the episode left me with a strangely tender feeling, especially as I reflected that my name day would likely pass unnoticed. He spoke ruefully of having no money except for spiritual gifts, reminisced over a bizarre Dresden gift of oversized yellow gloves, and in the evening ranged from the Berlin Congress and the Chileans to Gothic architecture and his disgust at theatricalizing the Last Supper in the Mass.

Content

Thursday, September 2:

R. wakes up saying, "What rubbish! It is at Christmas," and he tells me we had been with friend Joukowsky in the morning, the bell rang, and I said, "Ah, that will be someone bringing me good wishes on my birthday," whereupon R. was beside himself for having forgotten it: "Is it on September 29?" "Yes." "I am going mad, I cannot remember dates any more." Then awakening. This fills me once more with strange and pleasant feelings.

On the previous evening, wanting a frame, I remembered that I did not have the wherewithal to buy it, wondered whether I should request it for my name day, then reflected that, since my name day (September 27) does not mean anything to R., it must in consequence pass unrecognized. Talking of Christmas, he says he will be giving me only spiritual gifts, since he has no money.

In town with the children. R. rules lines. Over coffee he tells us a curious story: in Dresden, when, before the first performance of Rienzi, he was completely penniless, Herr Schletterer, founder of the Leipzig Gallery and an intimate friend of his sister Luise, sent him through her 6 pairs of yellow kid gloves which had been made for him in Paris and were too big. No walk, R. remains in the garden with the children, while I write letters; Hans is said to be ill again in Munich.

Conversation in the evening. R. keeps coming back to the disgraceful decisions of the Berlin Congress, then he expresses his pleasure in the brave Chileans; talking about architecture in general, which follows from a sketch of the cathedral as a study for Parsifal, he puts forward the conjecture that the term "Gothic" originated in Spain, that the Gothic style in the Gothic realms of the North arose through contact with the Arabs, it spread from there to France and then to Germany, and for that reason the term is quite correct. He gives energetic expression to his aversion to turning the Last Supper into a theatrical performance in the Mass, and when we wonder how it was possible for the very evil power exerted by the church to be supported even by great rulers, he says, "There are very deep-seated reasons for that."