Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of August 18, 1881

Overview

A better night yields a cheerful breakfast, with conversation ranging over the absurdity of writing hexameters without mastery, and the day brightens further when a lively costume designer from Frankfurt visits and wins genuine approval for the upcoming production. The evening disappoints, however, as performances of the Grail Temple music and the Meistersinger Prelude both fall flat, creating a discord that only jokes can dispel. Richard's deeper frustration emerges in bitter recollections of Prussian neglect for venerable cultural monuments like Eisleben and the Magdeburg Cathedral.

Content

Thursday, August 18:

R. had a better night, and we are cheerful at breakfast. He thinks, among other things, about Goethe's hexameters and observes, "People should write such things only if they are able to. One must be out of one's mind to write hexameters." Dr. Helferich visits us to examine the children's figures. The costume designer from Frankfurt-am-Main also visits us and pleases us with his liveliness and understanding; we feel we might do very well with him. Jouk. gives him the sketches. Dr. Helferich tells us some interesting things about his profession.

But the evening brings us a rather unsuccessful rendering of the "Entrance into the Temple of the Grail" by Porges and Humperdinck and a performance by Rub. of the Meistersinger Prelude, which also does not appeal to R., producing a discordant atmosphere that finally dissolves into jokes. "Oh, were I but rid in my halls of Isis and Osiris!" exclaims R. And before going off to sleep, he says he feels as if he is living amid "rotten lettuces." [This last sentence obliterated in ink by an unknown hand.]

(In the evening he recalled his visit to Eisleben and complained with great bitterness about the neglect of this venerable town, also of the cathedral in Magdeburg; from there he goes on to a condemnation of the Prussian character, which had no feeling for or pride in preserving such monuments.)