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Abridged and translated by Geoffrey Skelton
New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1997
536 pages, $20.00
Although Kundry is among the most twisted of Wagner's characters, one writer has seen fit to liken this troubled woman to the composer's wife Cosima, viewing each of them as "a creature of ecstasy, the ecstasy of servitude, the ecstasy of guilt, and the ecstasy of atonement."1 How different this description is from the image of the widow Wagner current a century ago, when she was supreme commander of the Bayreuth Festival. Her word was law then. Only in recent days, with the publication of her diaries, has the contrasting persona, the helpmate, come strongly to the fore.
The diaries, almost a million words long and proceeding as an almost unbroken series of daily entries, constitute Cosima's account of her time with Wagner from 1869 to his death in 1883. With legal restrictions in place until the 1970s, this treasured source was rarely accessible and then only to Bayreuth-approved researchers. After decades of delay a full transcription of Cosima's text finally reached the reading public, and an English translation by Geoffrey Skelton quickly followed.2 The issuing of these fat two-volume works was a signal event not merely for Wagnerians; such broad-gauged scholars as George Steiner and Peter Gay likewise found in them much valuable historical matter.
In undertaking the project, Cosima aimed to justify her actions in the eyes of her daughters, but her recorded thoughts drift to all manner of subjects. A bohemian or Wagnerian form of high bourgeois living is revealed, down to the trivial crises of moody children, thieving servants, and ailing pets. Household doings at a higher level-piano and chamber music, readings, receiving callers and house guests, and getting up home theatricals - are also chronicled. (Especially elaborate annual celebrations marked two birthdays, Wagner's on 22 May and Cosima's on 24 December, nicely combining with Christmas.) At the same time,...