Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of June 11, 1881

Overview

A chest spasm in the morning and unrelenting cold confine the household indoors, setting the tone for a lunchtime conversation shadowed by dispiriting news — mortgaged Bavarian farms, a Russian conspiracy against the Tsar, and religious quarreling in Paris over a dead man's body. The day's gloom lifts considerably in the evening when Wagner reads aloud from Don Quixote, the lion episode and puppet show prompting shared laughter and mutual admiration for the singular strangeness of Cervantes' genius. The couple end the day marveling together at the work, their spirits restored.

Content

Saturday, June 11:

R. had a chest spasm in the morning, and the cold, raw weather puts him in utter despair. An article in the newspaper about the dire state of the farmers in Bavaria (most of the farms are said to be mortgaged) forms the dismal theme of our lunchtime conversation. In Russia a conspiracy against the Tsar has been discovered, and in Paris believers and atheists are quarreling over Littré’s body. One stays indoors and thinks of heating.

In the evening Don Quixote (the episode with the lion and the puppet show) produces a friendlier and more cheerful mood, and R. and I cannot tell each other often enough how singular this work is.