Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of February 22, 1871

Overview

Fine weather sends the children into the garden while Richard tries to kindle an inner brightness for work on the march. Letters report both musical failures and interest in Richard's works from Munich, Berlin, Brunn, and Leipzig. A town visit brings his revulsion from the French internees, and the evening's Carlyle reading is selective while Cosima remains absorbed in Calderon.

Content

Wednesday, February 22:

Splendid weather; R. says, "Now I must see if I can make the inner sun shine, too," and works on his march. I with Fidi and the others in the garden.

Richter has a letter from Munich, which says that Forges conducted Lohengrin so badly that he will not raise a baton again!

Nice letter from Herr Weitzmann in Berlin; R. has one from Brunn, where they are performing Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, and another from Leipzig, where they would like some day to see R. conducting his own things. The autograph, the conductor Schmidt writes, has been sold for ten louis d'or.

R. to town, I to meet him; he says he cannot look at the French people, he turns his eyes away. He finds an alien element in them which he does not wish to study, whereas he would make a close study of any German, however bad or unsympathetic.

In the evening, Carlyle; we skip the general chapters, which are too childish. During the day I read El monstruo de los jardines, which I find extraordinarily compelling.