Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of July 22, 1881

Overview

Cool weather confines them to the house, and Wagner works diligently while making light of the previous evening's tiresome singer. He reads aloud a translated pariah fable about a jackal undone by its own gratitude, using it to open a broader discussion of pariah existence, and earlier had shared with Cosima an illustrated portrait of the young Dürer. By evening Wagner is thoroughly fatigued, the creative exertion of the day having spent him.

Content

Friday, July 22:

The weather is cool; we have breakfast in bed. R. had a good night, and he works diligently. In the afternoon friend Brandt visits us, reporting all kinds of things about the theater. R. makes all kinds of jokes about Frl. Wulfinghoff.

He reads to us, translating as he goes, a pariah fable, about a jackal thanking the gods aloud for guiding it to some hams, thereby betraying itself, and being choked to death. He tells us many things about this pariah existence.

After breakfast, as I was going to my daily work, R. came to me and showed me Dürer’s portrait of himself as a young man in the Illustrirte Zeitung; very, very charming. Then at lunchtime a dialogue in the Fliegende Blätter between a forester and a prince, which R. says is the best thing the Fliegende Blätter has ever published. But in the evening he is very tired.