Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of October 20, 1871

Overview

Cosima's dream of dancing displeases Wagner, but daily work continues without outside help. Wagner recounts seeing a Jesuit whose face, to him, embodied cold hatred and foreignness, folding anti-Catholic feeling into aesthetic observation. Gersdorff writes about the manuscript, and the evening's Carlyle reading gives pleasure despite a judgment that Carlyle describes well while writing badly.

Content

Friday, October 20:

In a dream last night I saw myself dancing a quadrille, which does not please R. He works and I do mine, still without any news of outside help.

At lunch R. told me he had seen a Jesuit in his ceremonial vestments: “What a face! You would need a painter to reproduce it, for neither a poet nor a musician could do it justice; its predominating expression one could only describe as cold, sheer hatred. It looked to me so strange, so un-German. I have never seen friendly blue eyes in a Jesuit.”

In the afternoon a letter from Herr von Gersdorff, to whom I at once reply regarding the manuscript. In the evening we get much enjoyment from the episode with Maupertuis in Carlyle, and we come to the conclusion that C. describes things well, even if he is a bad writer.