diários de cosima homero

 VOlume 1

1869

Sunday, January } Bright Sunday sky. Eva healthy again. Richard well after a good night. Hoping for a letter from the children in Munich. First subject of conversation at breakfast—HomerI His influence on the artistic and earlier having ideals of my beloved. p. 29

Took up again the cantos of Homer which we read yesterday; a feeling that the book refuses to come to life when the Friend is not reading it out loud to me. To me the whole world is recognizable only in him and through him. — At R.’s wish the children are being given a second room; the move unsettles me, as does any outward change, however small. 30 

Afterward two cantos from the Odyssey (Polyphemus and Circe); great delight in the former; Circe, however, whom we accompanied with punch, sent us to sleep. Genelli’s Homer designs now no longer attract me, they are totally lacking in naivete, even if the conception is frequently brilliant. Completely different pictures arise in our minds when we read this magnificent poem. At eleven Richard goes to his apartment; I go to bed, blessing the children. 31 

(This evening R. pointed out to me that all the great poets—with the exception of Homer and Dante—^were dramatists.) 42 

Human intentions are pitiful, a puff of wind brings them to nought, and one finds oneself always in an open sea, rudderless, at the mercy of wind and waves, like Homer’s hero; happy the person to whom in the somber whirlpools a helpful divinity mildly appears! —• Love is this divine and beneficent Leucothea. Your mother is grieving today, my children, but she remains true to you and to her love. When she is no more, think of her and pray for her rest. 61 

In the pvening R. brings along an article by Cornelius about GenelU, which disgusts us both very much; R. says he throws in Dante, Homer, the Bible, as if they were nothing, and nothing comes out of it but false judgments; to stick strictly to the subject,-nobody does that any more.  113

“You never read the right things: you should read this history of Hellenism, which how at its dissolution this unique people was, as it were, returning to its heroic age; the things which occur in it could have come straight out of Homer.  118-119.

Very friendly letter from Professor Nietzsche, who sends us a lecture on Homer.140 

R. remarks how C(ervantes)’s genius creates exactly like Nature, and he and Shakespeare belong among the poets in whom, as in Homer, one does not notice the art, while (for example) the Greek tragedies, Schiller, Calderon, seem like high priests, constructing their forms, as it were, out of a thought.  155

Professor Nietzsche’s gift to me is the dedication of his lecture on Homer. (In the evening Der bethlehemjische Kindermord.) 176 

1870

In the evening I show Loulou Genelli’s illustrations to Homer; no particular pleasure in them. R. says, “Homer is Homer and Genelli is Genelli”^—^beauty is lacking. p. 182.  

Through Shakespeare one can to some extent form a picture of a figure like Homer: what Shakespeare is to men of letters, Homer must more or less have been to the priests.” I add in my thoughts; And what Richard is to our present-day men of letters and poets, who are quite unable to classify him. Lost my wedding ring on the way to Hergeschwyl! p. 293.

Moving on to Shakespeare, he says, “The fact that we know for sure that Sh. lived gives us proof of Homer’s existence.” 300

1871

The subject of our conversation this morning: Homer, only possible before the invention of writing,323.  

Over supper we discussed our in- dispensahles and classified them thus: Homer, Aeschylus and Sophocles, the Symposium, Don Quixote, the whole of Shakespeare, and Goethe's Faust. 372

I learn tlus evening from Clemens Br[ockhaus] that Prof. Nietzsche has now dedi cated his Homer, which he once dedicated to me, to his sister, and with  the same poem. I had to laugh at first, but then, after discussing it with R., see it as a dubious streak, an addiction to treachery, as it were —as if he were seeking to avenge himself for some great impression. 364-365.

1872

Our morning conversation leads us to the myths of Nature; the interpreta tion of Elpenor as a premature spring held back. R. says, “That is what gives Homer’s poetry its stamp of eternity—^that every episode has a mythical quality; it is not, as in Ariosto, for instance, an arbitrarily invented adventure.” 472.  

We read Schlegel’s conversations about language; when I single out what he says about Homer’s simplicity!, R. remarks, “Times are sad when one has to write about such things—^if our theater were blooming, I should certainly not be writing about actors and singers.” He remarks how Goethe and Schiller were distracted from their true work as poets by their criticial investigations—Hlpenor, Die Braut von Messina were the outcome of this period, significant in cultural history, but artistically unproductive, and it lasted until Schiller decided to become exclusively a dramatist and Goethe re turned to his Faust, which he did not rate particularly high aestheti cally. “Music is the only naive art—up to Mendelssohn. Beethoven did not ponder over the nature of the symphony.” 530 

1873

After lunch, he wondered whether the Greeks ever read their great dramatists; probably they did at the time of Aristotle; the quota tions presumably all from memory, but they probably read Aeschylus and Sophocles as well as Homer.687.  

1874

R. says, “This sort of art does for religion what Homer did for the heroic world—it gives eternal life to something which has vanished.”757

 

1876

R. wishes we had nothing of Goethe except Faust, he would then look as great and legendary as Homer; all these attempts to emulate Homer’s successors seem almost childish. 906

VOL 2

Greek history ends up just like the Iliad, all these people are like Homer’s heroes, but they cover an enormous field.” 39

R. slept well, but he is not yet starting on his cure. Today I tell Fidi about Achilles and Homer and show him the drawings by Carstens. A picture of Juliet in the l\llustrirte\ Z\eitun£[ does not at all displease me, but R. says, “I cannot imagine Juliet ever meditating— just seeking, watching. 91

Today we drew up a plan for Fidi’s future reading. Philosophy: Schopenhauer. Keligion: Eckhart, Tauler. Art: R. Wagner. Natural history: Darwin. History: Greeks, Romans, English. Novels: W. Scott, Balzac. Frenchmen, Italians (Machiavelli). Otherwise all minds of the top grade (but only these): Goethe, Schiller, Dante, Calderon, Shake speare, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles. 135

Oh, these philologists, when they approach the prob lem of Homer, so uncertain of themselves, splitting hairs—wretched fellows.”) —228

Then our conversation turns to Homer (after R. has called me Pan-elopeia), and he says that Homer was really the poet par excellence, the source of all poetic art, the true creator. We recall several things in the Odyssey, and then he talks about the Iliad, how interrelated it all is, like a drama, and he talks of the difference between the two epics. 309

see it, whereas he has forgotten so many actors in plays he did see. He works on his article, as he says, “non multa sed multund’ [“not many, but much”], he has got to Homer today. Glorious weather, a cloudless sky, R. arranges an outing to the Waldhiitte, and at five o’clock we all drive out there. 324

During the evening he told me he had had an idea which he still had to work out; he preferred not to tell me what it was, for then he would give away his “point.” “Or shall I tell you?” “Whatever you feel is right.” He: ’‘'Homer blind, Beethoven deaf—those are the two poles.” 326

Recently he said, regarding these runs, “Like Homer, Beeth. sometimes nodded.” — 415

In the evening R. reads some scenes from the conclusion of HenryIV,PartI;atlunch,talkingofGoetheandShakespeare,hehad already said, “In the former one sees the great poet, how he arranges his material, how he shapes it; in the latter one sees none of that, he  remains unfathomable; the only one like him is Homer, and that is why people have the idea that neither Homer nor Shakespeare ever existed.” 446-447.

Painters are like that, to them all things are there to be looked at, to feast their eyes on; poets, too, are cruel—Homer, for example; they depict heroism in all its cruelty and heartlessness, and then someone comes along like Jesus, who is all heart. He is at his greatest when he is bitter, when all his fury breaks out, he will separate the father from the son, everything will wither—^then he shows his divinity. Of all the arts, music alone is entirely detached from all that, pure and redeeming.” 471

Then he tells me he thought of Homer, who was an Ionian, and thus represents the feminine principle; now Gobineau will only allow the Dorians, who had to borrow from Athens a singer to inspire thefti— that is a bad thing. 774

R. did not have a good night, and since the weather is wet, he does not go out; he passes his time with Homer, talks to me about it, and says that in spite of all its great qualities it seems to him, with so much talk and' the sham battles, frivolous in comparison with certain succinct -Gurman sagas, particularly the conclusion of the N[ibelungeti\lied. 846  

I visit some churches with S. while R. is reading Homer. (The report 851

Voss’s translation: Johann Heinrich Voss (1751-1826); his German translation of Homer’s Odyssey appeared in 1781, the Iliad 1793.