Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of January 10, 1871

Overview

War news from Paris appears encouraging to the Wagners, even as further fighting in the Vosges is expected. Richard's gift of a fine English Shakespeare edition and Countess B.'s request for help sit beside Cosima's fatigue and continued teaching of the children. Evening reading in Gibbon and Carlyle provokes laughter, thought, and a sharp contrast between German worth and Frederick the Great's French cultural blindness.

Content

Tuesday, January 10:

The news of the bombardment of Paris is good, and it seems the French themselves realize the hopelessness of their position. All the same a combined assault on the Vosges is being prepared.

Arrival of the Shakespeare which R. is giving me, a beautiful English edition. Visit from Countess B., who asks me to write down for her a criticism of the obituary of her father, with which she is not satisfied. Great weariness, which I fight against in order to do German history with the children.

In the evening read Gibbon with R.: his childish views on the "barbarian" Germans made us laugh heartily, but also gave us cause for thought. Before that we had been truly shattered by Gellert's conversation with Frederick II, which we read again in Carlyle. How noble, enlightened, and modest does the poet appear, and how tragic the great German King who, blinkered by French culture, cannot recognize his own people!