Word: cosima
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...COSIMA WAGNER'S DIARIES, VOL. I, 1869-1877 Edited by Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack Translated by Geoffrey Skelton; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1199 pages...
...somehow inappropriate to such a man as it is to most legendary artists. But his last 14 years are about to receive intense scrutiny by scholars, Wagner lovers and Wagner loathers-who seem to exist in equal numbers -for they were recorded in torrential detail by his second wife Cosima in her diary...
...Bulow tolerated the affair, even though it brought two Wagner babies into his household. One reason for the unusual arrangement was that all three wanted to keep the scandal from the young King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who was their adoring, idealistic patron. Finally in 1868, pregnant once again, Cosima left for Switzerland to live with Wagner, and here the diary begins. She saw it as a way of explaining to her children how a Godfearing woman like herself could have done such a thing. (Actually, an example was close at hand: Cosima was the illegitimate child of Franz Lizst...
They were neither an admirable nor likable pair, but the diary is far from an odious document. If it does not redeem them, it does manage to enhance them, principally because of their love for each other. In his chronic deep depressions Wagner felt that only Cosima's existence kept him from suicide. On their son's first birthday she writes, "At 4:30 I am awakened by sweet sounds, R. at the piano proclaiming to me the hour of birth." He would sing to her as she worked, a cantilena from / Puritani, a melody of Beethoven...
...structure either, or intellectual or emotional consistency. What interests Russell most is turmoil, and where there are not sufficient amounts available in his subject's life, he will supply his own. So in Mahler the composer (Robert Powell) imagines himself in the midst of a pop fantasy involving Cosima Wagner, Nazis, Crosses, Jewish stars and a crimson seesaw; this is Russell's representation of Mahler's conversion from Judaism to Catholicism. The scene-like much of the movie-means to be shocking but succeeds only in being a little naughty. Mahler is overripe, hyperbolic, hysterical, without...