Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of March 11, 1881

Overview

Wagner begins the day in good spirits at his composition desk but is soon beset by persistent abdominal pain, leading to a conversation about Indian karmic teaching and the consolation it offered even to those of lowest social standing. Joukowsky's continuing failure to render the Magic Garden satisfactorily frustrates Wagner, who takes what exercise he can on the railway station platform in lieu of a proper walk. The evening brings unexpected tenderness when, late at night, the couple hears their daughters Isolde and Eva singing Wagner's own song to themselves in bed—a moment that unexpectedly turns the conversation toward the painful subject of Hans von Bülow.

Content

Friday, March 11:

R. had a good night and goes cheerfully to his work, but when I come downstairs around lunchtime, I find him vexed by the abdominal troubles from which he continually suffers. He talks, permitting a pariah to tell himself that, if he bore his earthly lot without complaining, he could look forward to a noble rebirth; the teaching that the whole genesis was constantly present in its entirety.

R. is having trouble with the Magic Garden, which friend Jouk. still cannot get right. He drives off with the latter and with Fidi and takes a walk on the station platform, since the weather does not permit anything else. R. then works before supper, and afterward we read the Englishman's curious letter and look with great enjoyment at H. Burgkmair's splendid work, Der Weisskunig, lent me by the royal library in Munich. 'The power in these robes!' R. exclaims.

Then R. plays the Oberon Overture and several things from Oberon: he feels he is coming home, he says, when he takes up Weber. The Hebrides Overture is a much greater artistic masterpiece, he observes, than the Oberon Overture, yet how much soul, how much fire it has!

A sad conversation about Hans between R. and me; I resolve to keep silent on the subject from now on. At ten o'clock, when we were still all assembled in the salon, I heard a distant sound; we open the door into the hall and hear Isolde and Eva singing his 'Gruss seiner Treuen' to themselves in bed. It touches us greatly and leads R. to tell us about this nice episode in his life. And it is then the dear children who bring us to Hans!