Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of June 21, 1881

Overview

Richard begins a spa cure, drinking Rakoczy water each morning, then turns to his score, and the afternoon is spent largely in the garden. He receives Siegfried's tutor Köhler with patient attentiveness before gently urging the young man to lift his gaze outward and embrace a more cheerful spirit. Walking with Cosima under the pergola, Richard sketches the structure of his forthcoming essay "Herodom and Christianity," comparing his approach to that of a dramatist dividing work into acts, and later asks that the death masks of Beethoven and Weber be removed, finding them distasteful.

Content

Tuesday, June 21:

R. starts on his cure, drinks two glasses of Rakoczy water, and we have breakfast in the summerhouse. He then works on his score, and we spend virtually the whole afternoon in the garden. Herr Köhler, Siegfried's tutor, comes; R. counters his singular, abstruse manner with a calm, attentive earnestness, and then exhorts him in the most splendid words to be cheerful, to look around himself and stop brooding.

In the evening more about Gobineau and Bahai. In the afternoon, as we were strolling together beneath the pergola, R. and I, he told me his plans for his next article ('Heroism and Christianity') and said that even in such things he proceeds like a dramatist, dividing up his work as if into acts. R. does not like looking at the death masks of Beethoven and Weber; I remove them. He compares it to playing games with the crucifix.