Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of March 16, 1870

Overview

Cold clear weather and the children’s garden play accompany Wagner’s unsatisfied work and Cosima’s correspondence with Nietzsche. The evening reading of Hamlet strikes Cosima with unusual force, especially Hamlet’s movement beyond revenge and suicide into a vision of the world’s irreparable nature. Letters from Mathilde Maier and Claire remain secondary to the shock of Shakespeare’s metaphysical darkness.

Content

Wednesday, March 16:

Fine weather, though still cold. The children in the garden. I write to Prof. Nietzsche. R. at work, but not satisfied; he says Porges’s visit was of no benefit to him. I take Loulou to her lesson. In the evening R. reads me some of Hamlet, terrible impact; for the first time I realize that Hamlet, in recognizing the nature of the world, passes far beyond thoughts of revenge, and also indeed of suicide; the horrible deed which should spur him to revenge makes him at the same time aware of the nature of the world and also, in consequence, aware that no death can put things right. On top of that he is the seer of spirits, to whom reality can only appear as a terrible dream. (Letters from Mathilde Maier and Claire.)