Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of October 31, 1870

Overview

A tender line from Wagner lingers into a day of letters, French sympathies among friends, and reports of suffering at Metz. A visit to Countess Bassenheim and the portrait of Gambetta deepen Cosima and Wagner's sense of France as feverish and declining. Lope de Vega brings delight in the evening, while Wagner insists that observers should meet the war's grandeur and terror with silence before divine disposal.

Content

Monday, October 31:

“To kiss and kiss you as I may, and with your kisses fade away”—thus R. concluded yesterday.

Today a letter from my mother, who is living at Berg. Letters from the Schurés, still fanatically French! Drove to Countess B.’s; her son tells in woeful detail about the sufferings of our troops at Metz. Gambetta’s portrait in the Illustrirte Z. once more shows us the febrile, ineffectual character of a dying race.

In the evening Fuente ovejuna by Lope de Vega; infinite delight in it.

R. rightly says that we onlookers can only be silent in the face of the grand and terrible events now taking place; no boasting of victories, no complaints about the suffering, simply a deep and silent recognition that God disposes.