Friday, January 1:
On Christmas Day, my 31st birthday, this notebook was to have started; I could not get it in Lucerne. And so the first day of the year will also contain the beginning of my reports to you, my children. You shall know every hour of my life, so that one day you will come to see me as I am; for, if I die young, others will be able to tell you very little about me, and if I live long, I shall probably only wish to remain silent. In this way you will help me do my duty, yes, children, my duty. What I mean by that you will find out later. Your mother intends to tell you everything about her present life, and she believes she can do so.
The year 1868 marks the outward turning-point of my life: in this year it was granted to me to put into action what for the past five years had filled my thoughts. It is an occupation I have not sought after or brought about myself: Fate laid it on me. In order that you may understand, I must confess to you that up to the hour in which I recognized my true inner calling, my life had been a dreary, unbeautiful dream, of which I have no desire to tell you anything, for I do not understand it myself and reject it with the whole of my now purified soul.
The outward appearance was and remained calm, but inside all was bleak and dreary, when there came into my life that being who swiftly led me to realize that up to now I had never lived. My love became for me a rebirth, a deliverance, a fading away of all that was trivial and bad in me, and I swore to seal it through death, through pious renunciation or complete devotion. What love has done for me I shall never be able to repay.
When the stars decreed that events, about which you will find out elsewhere, should banish into isolation my only friend, the guardian spirit and savior of my soul, the revealer of all that is noble and true, that he should be left solitary, abandoned, joyless, and unfriended, I cried out to him: I shall come to you and seek my greatest and highest happiness in sharing the burdens of life with you. It was then that I left you, my two precious eldest children. I did it and would do it again at any moment, and yet I miss you both and think of you day and night. For I love you all, each with an equal love; in your hearts I seek the refuge for my earthly memory when my time is past, and I would sacrifice everything to you, everything but the life of this one person.
Our separation will be temporary, and you are still so small that you will not feel it as your mother does. This is my hope.
Early in the morning the Friend came to greet me and wish me a happy New Year. I am always so overcome by his kindness toward me, in my ever deeper awareness of his greatness, that in his presence I always feel I must dissolve into tears. Afterward I dressed Loldchen and Evchen prettily, in white satin frocks and garlands of roses, and we went to give him our good wishes. Then we had breakfast, after which he went to work as usual, making a fair copy of the second act of Siegfried and completing his essay on the Jews. I took Evchen and Loldchen into the garden.
Before lunch, at one o’clock, my beloved read me what he had written. At table he told me more of the range of his essay, and we discussed his position, that is to say, the position of art as laid down by the Jews, which made me see Mendelssohn for the first time as a tragic figure. After the meal he went for his usual walk, after receiving a telegram from the King and another from you. The latter affected him as it did me; my heart was heavy and full to bursting, because you were not here with me, but a glance at him consoled me and gave me courage. I was looking into a happy future.
Then I arranged the Christmas tree, which was lit today for the second time. At about five o’clock Evchen and Loldchen, dressed again as angels, came down and found the Christmas gifts which had been kept back. Richard played for them, they danced, and I thought of you, my absent ones, so far away, and once again I watched the merry scene through a veil of tears, yet here, too, these tears were without bitterness. Then Richard started up a jumping jack, to Loldi’s great joy.
While the little ones were enjoying their supper, he played me the “Spring Song” from Die Walküre. When you one day hear these sounds, my children, you will understand me. I cannot hear them without being transported right away.
We had tea upstairs in my room; I asked my beloved to dictate something to me today, biography, for superstitious reasons. They say that whatever one does on the first day of the year one continues. Although it was an exertion for him, he wanted in his indescribable goodness toward me to do it, and so there emerged two pages about Schopenhauer which for me are beyond all price.
At eleven we parted, after once more reviewing the day together and finding it harmonious and good. When he had gone, I sat down at my writing desk to talk to you. The Friend has given me the golden pen with which he wrote Tristan and Siegfried, and this I consecrate to these communications of mine to you. Thus I signify to you how sacredly I regard this work of a mother’s confidences and anxieties; the pen which has traced the sublimest things ever created by a noble spirit shall now be dedicated solely to the depths of a woman’s heart.
So God bless you, my children, you who are far away, you who are close by, and you lying still unknown within my womb. May your mother’s love be a friendly light to you in your path through life! Do not mistake your mother, though you yourselves will never be able to do what she has done, since what Fate has here decreed is something that will not recur. All whom I love are now at rest, and so I, too, will go to my bed. For you and for him my last and friendliest thoughts!