Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of February 6, 1881

Overview

Richard began the day reflecting on how early theatrical experience had shaped writers differently—Lessing and himself through the stage, Goethe through amateur performance—before settling into work on his score. During their walk, a joking exchange about the Grail shining of its own accord led Richard to remark that he was once again fated to live out in reality what he had expressed in his poetry, including the loaded symbolism of the swan. In the evening Calderón's drama swept them into an atmosphere of surging passion, which Richard contrasted with Shakespeare by observing that in Calderón one always sees the hand of the conscious artist.

Content

Sunday, February 6:

R. is somewhat restless, but not until the early hours. At breakfast he says, “Lessing and I got our first impressions in the theater, with Goethe it was more through amateur acting.” Then he talks again about Shakespeare’s language, its dignity in both wit and irony, and its majesty; he calls it pedigree. Yesterday we compared the English with the German, and the German strikes us as much nobler.

R. works. At lunch we have friend Feustel, an always welcome guest. We take a walk in the palace gardens; talk about the way one has to expend so much energy in this climate. “And now I am about to do it all over again,” R. says reflectively. “And then I suppose the Grail will shine on you of its own accord,” I add jokingly. This amuses R. very much: “I can already see Levi unveiling it,” he says. And then: “I have always been fated to carry out in prose, in life, what I have put into my poetry - that scene with the swan, people will think it sprang from my views on vivisection!” I add that there is something daemonic about the hunt in Tristan, it is like a deliberate sin, in contrast to the tragedy of the lovers’ original sin. He works on his score; comes to fetch me for supper and tells me that all his writing and creating is an endeavor to prove worthy of the kind of life I have given him. And various other things which I do not dare to think about!

In the evening we read the first act of Calderón’s El mayor monstruo los celos and are completely swept up by the surge of passion in it, the familiar tragic outlook. As a prime example of this style R. also reads the sonnet to the pale star at the end of the battle in his Mujer, llora y vencerás.

Of the scene in Henry IV he says on our return from our walk, “It is exactly like overhearing a scene between a king and his son, something one would not otherwise experience.” I remind him of green Naples following the thunderstorm, saying that Shakespeare always arouses in me a similar feeling of astonishment. “In Calderón one can see the artist,” R. observes.