Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of July 31, 1881

Overview

Wagner picks up the previous evening's philosophical thread, musing that the masses retain a raw sense of justice even if the idealistic efforts of great men rarely reach their ultimate goals, and the day proceeds with a sociable but slightly uneasy lunch with neighbors and friends. In the evening Wagner sits at the piano and plays through passages of Rossini's Guillaume Tell, alternating between genuine admiration for its finer moments and laughter at its shallower effects, and expresses frustration at the fate that places his own art in the same cultural marketplace as such work. A warm conversation about Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea brings out Wagner's admiration for capable, grounded women as the truest embodiment of German character.

Content

Sunday, July 31:

We resume our conversation from yesterday, and R. says he has been thinking a lot about the subject, “to save taking refuge in words.” I express my doubts whether anything could ever be done for the world in general; one sees from politics what becomes of the efforts of great men. What they do remains, but only rarely is it carried on and the goal reached.

R. returns after having already left me and says, “But the masses have a certain feeling for justice,” and he cites a factual example from French history and the occupation of India. He works, and tells me that he has reached the point where he no longer enjoys his work. Our neighbors to lunch, Rub. and Porges as well, the latter reading to me and the children his piece on Tristan. R. is rather ill at ease, as always when strangers are present, but friendly. He recalls Alwine Frommann with expressions of warmth. Dr. Landgraf comes around 6 o’clock and finds R. well.

We talk of the present way of treating children, using the headmaster here as an example: without any kindness or understanding, thus making the boys insensitive and indifferent. A stroll in the garden, a mood of tenderness. In the evening R. speaks of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell and plays parts of it, highly praising certain things, such as the meeting of the cantons, the third in particular, and laughing at others for their superficiality and vulgarity. The yodeling of Arnold and Mathilde in the love duet particularly amuses us, and I remark that they could just as well be milking cows or making butter.

“What has outraged virtue got in common with the vengeance of vice?” R. exclaims, thinking of the curious fate which has put his art on the same level as products such as these. “They don’t belong together; better throw out the new entirely, except that the old is now somewhat sterile.” We talked in the afternoon about Hermann und Dorothea, and he pointed out Goethe’s leanings toward efficient and genuinely strong women such as Dorothea and Elisabeth. Goethe: “And that is how a German woman should be, for she will never be like an Indian one.”