Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of March 20, 1881

Overview

Boni's birthday is marked by Wagner improvising on Elisabeth's theme as gifts are presented, though the festive mood is tempered by Evi's illness and the fatigue carried over from the previous night's late reading. The day opens outward into remarkably wide-ranging reflection: Wagner recalls his first marriage to Minna with a mixture of horror and candor, revisits the comparative merits of Weber and Mozart with the earnestness of a lifelong obsession, and expresses his persistent longing to write symphonies. The evening closes on a sweeping cosmological reverie in which Wagner imagines the birth of the universe as driven by fear rather than desire, and muses on how moral significance is the only thing that lifts existence above indifference.

Content

Saturday, March 19:

R. had a good night, came back in the morning to Saint-Saëns’s remarks against him, asking himself what might be the cause. Does he really believe that he, R., desires success in France, or does he pretend to believe it, or does he want to prevent R.’s works from being performed?

R. works on his score, is pleased with what he has understood, and he says how quickly his works become strangers to him. Letter from Lusch to R., who insists on believing that it was I who suggested it. We go for a walk, R. and I, in the palace gardens, since one is more sheltered from the wind there.

In the evening R. reads aloud Calderón’s El médico de su honra, and its impact is so marked that R. exclaims, “What fools we are not just to keep on rereading these tremendously rare great poets!” Much then on the subject of jealousy; one can understand Don Gutierre. (Riddle at lunch: What is silver in front, gold behind? Mama! - On account of my hair.)