Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of January 5, 1881

Overview

Wagner passes a difficult day, troubled by a poor night, intrusive business correspondence, and a blustery walk that does little to restore him. Over lunch, conversation turns to the philosophy of jealousy and love, with Wagner insisting that the assumption of a shared beloved strikes at the very root of one's existence. In the evening he works through a tricky passage in the Parsifal orchestration, discovering that a missing word in his own sketch—dereinst—had been an important rhythmic anchor all along.

Content

Wednesday, January 5:

R. did not have a good night, and he feels oppressed. In the morning he reads Gobineau’s stories with much enjoyment; he particularly likes “The Persian Magician,” and he feels that of all modern languages French is the best suited for conveying an impression of Oriental courtesy.

At 12, when he comes downstairs to begin work, he finds some business letters; these delay him and vex him. Believing him to be working, I pay some calls with Boni; as we return, I see him in the avenue, coming toward us. He had been watching the other children skating, but he is not well. And a walk we take in the palace gardens does nothing to restore him, for it is very windy. “Devil take ozone!” he exclaims in the middle of it.

At lunch our conversation turns to violent emotions, and whether there can be love without jealousy. R. says, “It is a terrible thought, and one is deprived of the basis of everything, of one’s whole roots, if one assumes that somebody else can be the sharer of one’s joy, that just shows what a risky thing the love bond is.”

Yesterday R. said that he still intended to write about his ideas on property for the Blätter; how sacred this idea has always been can be seen in the fact that every robber, every conqueror, starts with the assumption of its sacredness. How would it be if nobody possessed anything?

In the evening he works a little on the orchestration of Parsifal and says how curious it was that, while orchestrating “In heilig ernster Nacht nahten sich des Heilands holde Boten,” he happened to open the book at that passage and saw that in his sketch he had left out the word dereinst; this he immediately put back in, for rhythmically it was very welcome to him. Words like Heiland should never be extended, he says.

In the evening R. reads “Die Brautschau” to us, up to the end, that is to say, not right to the end, for R. feels it is amateurish and loses itself in insipidities. R. considers the form of the Mozart concertos extraordinarily clumsy, with some nice ideas scattered throughout.