Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of March 25, 1881

Overview

Morning conversation compares Brahmanism and Christianity, with Wagner ultimately elevating Christianity as the religion of suffering over Brahmanism's appeal to the intellect, while Cosima draws a connection between Gobineau's account of the Hunnish invasion and the destructive spirit of the nihilist movement. The afternoon includes a review of costume sketches and a productive compositional session, followed by an evening of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail that delights everyone. Wagner grows reflective about Mozart's courtship of his wife, comparing it wistfully to his own earlier relationship with Minna Planer, which he says bore no comparable flowering.

Content

Friday, March 25:

R. slept well. Our conversation concerns Brahmanism, which R. praises as the religion of intelligence, but then he places Christianity above it as the religion of suffering.

When he comes to me around lunchtime, I tell him that Count Gobineau’s account of the Hunnish invasion has provided me with a clue to the nihilist movement, since it seems as though all that now matters is destruction. At lunch our conversation comes back to India. But R. is still feeling oppressed. We go for a walk after he has inspected Jouk's costume sketches. The gale drives us home.

R. works and rejoicingly shows me a page on which he has filled in only a few instructions, as Gurnemanz and Parsifal are conversing. In the evening he has the new incidental music for Parsifal played to him, and then he goes through Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Osmin, Osmin and Blondchen, the Turkish music), to the very great delight of us all.

When we are alone, and R. has ordered a half-bottle of champagne, he talks about the birth of this inspired work, about Mozart’s relationship with his future wife: “It was like my relationship with Minna Planer, except that in my case it produced no blossoms.”