Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of October 17, 1880

Overview

R. slept well and was especially tender while worries about Lusch weighed on the day. He came back from the Belle Arti critical of parts of the Assumption, and after a lovely walk with the children on the Riva, the evening ended badly with a disastrous trip to the theater.

Content

Sunday, October 17:

R. slept well; I am somewhat worried on account of Lusch. R. tremendously kind and consoling.

He goes to the Belle Arti and returns with reservations about the Assumption, since he is so disturbed by God the Father in it; the encounter in the temple seems to him more perfect if she, striving toward and arousing sublimity, does not spoil it "with a blot."

I read Schiller's poem Glück ["Fortune"] aloud, and R. finds it so beautifully directed at Goethe. Walk with R. and the children on the Riva, very, very lovely, but in the evening a visit to the theater is a complete disaster.

[End of the fifteenth book of the Diaries. The sixteenth book begins: "Venice, October 1880, written in Bayreuth, November 20. As always for Siegfried." Opposite the first page: "On October 4 I received from Herr V. Stein the news that he will not be returning to us; his father wishes to keep him at home. R. writes to him very nicely and makes the decision easier to bear."]