Category: Cosima Wagner Diaries

R. tells me his dream: he beat Putz, who was incurably ill, to death with a stick, saying, “Nobody is bothering about you, poor creature—now at any rate you will find release,” and then buried him beneath a mass of rubble lying in the garden.  At breakfast we discuss the…

Still arranging rooms! — R. receives some more proofs from Basel, which he finds very opportune, since he still—alas!—cannot get down to his score. —  Over afternoon coffee he says, after gazing at me for a long time: “A friend! You are my friend. It is not only that you…

Richter Day—that is to say, the day on which we expected Richter, but he does not come, delayed in Pest by the presence of the Emperor.  Bad weather still and on top of that my indisposition, which makes me completely useless. —  R. cannot return to his work yet, for…

Now Herr Schott has died in Milan. —  R. again read Freytag today and said, “How it does one good to concern oneself with these ancient relationships, which we can regard as secure, and to abandon for a while our world of Jesuits and Jews, our complete barbarism!” —  R….

Daniel’s and Grandmama’s birthday, dull weather. R. dreamed about Rus, that we had taken him on our travels and he turned out to be a lion and suddenly ran down a slope with a laborer; as I was saying to R. that we could not possibly take such an animal…

“As an artist I don’t think much of the spiked helmet,” R. said yesterday to the ladies, “and yet I recognize it as our only salvation.” Today he praises the ladies highly and says he was pleased to see them kiss my hand; when I refuse on any account to…