Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of July 23, 1881

Overview

After a restless night, Wagner greets Cosima and the children's morning outing with mock-gruff reproach, but is recovered and in fine spirits by the time they gather at midday. He continues drawing on Jacolliot's book, elaborating to Cosima his meditation on the elephant—unchanged across all time—as a rebuke to humanity's cultural self-congratulation and attendant decay. The day ends cheerfully with opera reminiscences, an outdoor supper, and the satisfaction of three newly orchestrated pages.

Content

Saturday, July 23:

R. had a restless night. “You are a Devil’s brood,” he says to me, referring to the little drive the children and I take this morning. At one o’clock we find him well and cheerful again. He has been working. He continues to recount many things from J.’s book to us, and he says to me in the afternoon, as we are strolling together in the garden, that he will have something more to say about the elephant, a creature which has remained unchanged for all time, whereas the favored human being, with his culture, has been reduced to decrepitude.

In the evening reminiscences of various operas, Robert le Diable, Norma, Straniera. Then, however, Die Königin von Athen, the Muses’ chorus, which R. particularly loves. He has orchestrated three pages today, and we have a merry meal in the garden and spend most of the evening there.