Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of January 25, 1883

Overview

Wagner catches a cold that keeps them indoors, though he continues working on his preface and entertains the household by disguising himself in a visiting count's coat to comically "propose marriage" to the ailing Lusch. In the evening, Cosima is finally obliged to reveal the contents of a troubling letter from Herr von Bürkel, which agitates Wagner greatly and prompts him to consider assembling his own orchestra. His mood darkens further, but he redirects the conversation to Hamlet's "To be or not to be," insisting it must be delivered as pure brooding rather than philosophy, before admitting privately: "My works are there!"—implying the festival could be abandoned.

Content

Thursday, January 25:

During the night R. read the scene between Valentine and Gretchen and says what a pitiful role Faust plays in it all, even in the illustrations, however handsome he may be made to look. I observe that in matters of love the women are always the more absorbing figures, with the single exception of Tristan. In the morning a telegram from Neumann, for whom R. feels sympathy, going through all his difficulties "with Semitic earnestness."

R. has caught a cold, and the thought of erysipelas worries me. The cold outside is said to be extreme today; we do not go out, R. works on his preface. At lunch there is talk about the personal participation of royal generals in battles; R. observes that it does not amount to much, they just use a telescope to assure themselves of how things are progressing; but people like Frederick the Great and Gustavus Adolphus could not leave it at that — they had to go and see for themselves how it was getting on.

Sitting in Lusch's room in the afternoon, I dictate a letter to Boni; R. comes in, takes the pen from Eva, and writes a sentence. The visit of the jettatore Count Vesuce gives him the chance to play another joke: he puts on the Count's coat in the antechamber and goes into Lusch's room to ask for her hand in marriage! He has a massage and seems to be well, but he complains that life is an eternal winter; the short days are a torment to him.

In the evening I have at last to tell him the contents of Bürkel's letter; he is very agitated by it, though he shows no anger, decides to engage an orchestra of his own, and tells me I should write and say that the state of his health does not permit such communications to be sent to him. Then he wishes to talk of other things; he brings up "To be or not to be" and says it cannot be spoken too morbidly, indeed even sentimentally — it is a brooding, an outpouring, to which it is foolish to ascribe any philosophical meaning. But then, in our bedroom, he comes back to the King's order and says impulsively that we should give it all up: "My works are there!"