Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of October 13, 1881

Overview

Bad weather drove the day inward toward speculation, memory, and reading, as Richard mused on stars, divine individuation, Naples, and the terrace nights of the Villa d'Angri. A drive and his reading in Der Urmensch amused him with its pseudo-scientific certainty while also provoking reflections on race and human origins. The evening turned happily literary and musical, with saga reading, a touch of Beethoven, and Richard praising late Beethoven for having stripped away everything extraneous until only pure thematic work remained.

Content

Thursday, October 13:

News from and about Lusch. R. talks about the stars: why did they separate? It is as though God loved to individualize. The weather is very bad. Memories of the Villa d’Angri, the night on the terrace, watching everyone come and go: “One felt like God Almighty,” says R.

R. works, and when the sun appears at about one o’clock I hear him calling in the garden and see him walking with the dogs. After lunch we go for a drive along the Konnersreuth highway; he tells me various things from Der Urmensch, including the author’s statement that there is nothing further to be said about the origin of man, since Prof. Müller has made no further researches! Which amuses us vastly.

Then he rhapsodizes over the beauty of a Nubian pictured in the book and expresses his opinion that the white races do after all stem from the black ones. He works, and in the evening we read in Uhland the story of Starkadr, following that of Egill which R. had read to us on the previous evening, and which delighted us all. In connection with them, R. plays the first bars of the C minor Symphony! We spoke of the sonatas; what R. praises in these final works of Beethoven, especially in the quartets, is that all extraneous matter has now vanished, and only thematic work remains. Of Bach he said recently, “Like the world before the advent of man.”