Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of March 12, 1870

Overview

Cosima’s melancholy sharpens into thoughts of death and the question of whether death can erase guilt. Gottfried’s lines about Tristan’s sorrow in happiness become the exact emblem of her own condition, happy with Wagner yet unable to forget Hans’s suffering. The children’s reading and singing fill the day, while Wagner’s evening reading from Tristan and Isolde deepens the association between love and remorse.

Content

Saturday, March 12:

Very melancholy feelings. Thoughts of death. Can it erase the consciousness of guilt? The four verses of Gottfried von Strassburg engrave themselves on my mind: “If ever anyone bore a constant sorrow in enduring felicity, then Tristan bore this constant sorrow.” For I am happy, yet I cannot forget that someone has suffered and is perhaps still suffering. All the time with the children; read Robinson, sang, etc. In the evening R. reads Gottfried’s Tristan und Isolde to me.