Volume 25, Number 17 · November 9, 1978
Notes from Valhalla
By Robert W. Gutman
Cosima Wagner's Diaries: Volume 1, 1869-1877
edited by Martin Gregor-Dellin, by Dietrich Mack, translated with an introduction by Geoffrey Skelton
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1,248 pp., $24.95
In August of 1835, the twenty-two-year-old Wagner, in search of singers for the Magdeburg opera, found himself stranded without money in Frankfurt and forced to surrender his baggage as security for an unpaid hotel bill. With unassailable confidence in his future fame, he passed the time while awaiting ransom by jotting down notes for his biography in a large red copybook. Some three decades later, when Ludwig of Bavaria, benefactor of the now celebrated composer, requested him to write the story of his life, he freshened his memory by referring to this 'Red Book,' in which he had continued at various times to set down his journeys, pursuits, and undertakings. It lay open before him when, in 1865, he began in Munich to dictate Mein Leben to his mistress, Cosima von Bülow, the second of Franz Liszt's three illegitimate children. As the work went forward, he must have realized that the very existence of the Red Book, a record of his contemporary views of men and events, would expose the many manipulations and suppressions of fact he found necessary to his narrative.
Review, 3127 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |