Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of August 15, 1881

Overview

A troubled day begins with chest constrictions that Richard tries to work through, and a brief attempt at a walk is quickly abandoned when the gaping faces of passersby and oppressive air prove intolerable. The evening brings a literary contrast: a repellent Jacolliot account of a Brahman funeral, heavy with exploited superstition, is countered by the bracing clarity of Thucydides's dialogue between the Athenians and Melians. Richard ends the night still rankled by the intrusive public scrutiny he experienced on their walk.

Content

Monday, August 15:

[Enclosed in the diaries, a poem of thanks and greeting sent by Wolzogen from Krokan, Norway.] It is a bad day, and for R. it begins with chest constrictions. He takes his mind off it with work, but in the afternoon his eyesight starts flickering. We set out for a walk, he and I, but soon turn back; first he is pained by the faces he sees, and then he finds the air unpleasant.

In the evening he reads to us from Jacolliot a somewhat overdetailed account of the funeral of a Brahman, a repellent picture of exploited superstition. After that, "to restore your spirits," the dialogue in Thucydides between the Athenian and the Melian, and we are brought to life again by its simple, plain, highly civilized language. This reminds R. of Pfaffe Lamprecht, and he reads aloud his favorite passage between Candacis and Alexander. "I find it insulting," R. says to himself as he is changing his clothes; he is thinking of our walk and the faces that, on top of everything else, gape at him.