Cosima's Diaries

Sunday, December 1:

R. slept well and does some work. Over coffee after lunch he tells me: "When Parsifal is finished, I shall cast an eye over the world and see what its attitude is likely to be to such a work. But now I don't want to think of it." He complains how little attention is paid to a sense of beauty, "in which I regard myself as Mozart's successor" - for example, the way Brünnhilde talks of Siegmund to Wotan in Die Walküre. When I point out that the emotional feelings of the listener at this point prevent his having much regard for the consummate form: "That's what the works are for, they are there and can be studied."

R. stresses the fact that the Jews have been amalgamated with us at least 50 years too soon: "We must first be something ourselves. The damage now is frightful." "I wish a Byron would emerge among us, to describe and castigate our society! But he would have to be a prince, and, above all, immensely rich." Reflecting on Germany's inability to produce a Byron, he says, "Prince Pückler had something of the right qualities, he was elegant and irked by our wretched conditions, but he had no ideas to inspire him, no greatness." We then come to the conclusion that it was not the poet Byron who so impressed Goethe, but the man.

R. goes for a walk, as always now in the palace gardens, for which he has discovered a new measurement (five times lengthways), then he does some work. Our Friedel very full of fun at supper, demonstrates his geographical knowledge. Today we do not continue with Nap., instead R. reads me the conclusion of the "Walpurgis Night," the part in which Thales reappears with Homunculus; we are entranced by its humor: "This is the only way to deal with such things." The Euripidean Helena, however, does not much interest him - only the idea, not the execution. On the other hand, the scene between Proteus, Thales, and Homunculus, the "peevish" Nereus and the whole remarkable mixture of emotion and humor, send him off into joyous laughter and admiring exclamations. But we have to laugh at the idea of trying to depict all this on stage. When he is reading the passage with the sirens, he says, "Here comes Rossini!"

But after the reading R. looks very tired. R. amused us vastly during one of these evenings by admitting his interest in the novel in the Tagblatt - Alexa, a criminal case which excites his curiosity: "It is very poor," he says with a laugh.

Monday, December 2:

R. is not well, he did not have a good night. He works, but at lunch he looks very preoccupied, and over coffee he reverts to the subject of producing Parsifal here. He says the only way in which he could be helped would be by having the deficit taken off his back, thus freeing him from Munich. I tell him that, even if this did not happen, we could still give the Society of Patrons their money back and implore the King not to have Parsifal produced in Munich. R. says, “I should like to produce it only when we, you and I, feel we want to.”

R. goes for a walk and then works persistently, delaying supper; I am concerned about him, but fight against my fears as much as I can. Fidi again very lively, R. says, “Oh, how I enjoy sitting with you among the children, this is my real triumph.” Then he laughs: “But what a pity General Muck is leaving without marrying Daniela!” A reference to some foolish town gossip, to which, however, he links his theory that a man should be 20 years older than his wife, otherwise he would find himself in his second childhood. The children say: “Like you and Mama.” R.: “I am too old, but we are a special case, and anyway everyone must do as he thinks fit.”

I quote Goethe’s (Orphic) words and, since R. does not remember them, read the passage to him; over Ananke he becomes pensive and thinks of his fate as an artist, the obligation he is under to produce Parsifal, and his countenance, which normally radiates joy during his conversations with us, becomes clouded and gloomy. He talks of his New Year’s article, “Shall We Hope?”, to which question he will answer, “Let us hope,” but both question and answer must be very precisely formulated; he cannot write mere phrases, he says. I should prefer silence, but I do not say so.

We pass on to W. Scott and read about the siege of Toulon; R. tells me that in Eisleben (at the age of 7) he dreamed, after reading about this siege in Bredow’s history book, that he was standing somewhere in Toulon and seeing all the corpses and other horrors!

Tuesday, December 3:

Again a bad night... I do not know how I can bear my worry and overcome it. Despite his fatigue he does some work. When I fetch him for lunch he says, “I have just been thinking of you and saying to myself, ‘I simply had to live with her, there was no help for it.’ ” But at table he is very absorbed, and over coffee he says, “I must have unlimited time for Parsifal.”

He sleeps in the afternoon longer than usual, then we stroll in the garden and afterward go together to visit our neighbors the Staffs. After the visit R. writes a few letters, but he feels run down, “heavy,” he says. He plays the first movement of the Pastoral with Lusch, then I read aloud some of W. Scott’s Life of Napoleon, without much enjoyment for either of us. He says it was Thiers who described the battles most vividly. “We are drinking wine already drunk,” R. says, making a play on G.’s words, which he says only Goethe could have written. As we are going up to bed we pass by the little Buddha: “I shan’t compose you,” says R. “How could one make anything of such a fellow in a blue cap?”

Wednesday, December 4:

Bad night; when I ask R. at about 4:30 a.m. how he is, he laughs: “All right, I am awake, it’s just a pity that it’s still night.” I have the feeling that his work is wearing him out; he says variants occur to him during the night, “though they are usually not much use,” but also thoughts of the Society of Patrons and “Shall We Hope?” “What fifths I have been writing today—they are tremendous!” But gaiety is utterly beyond me, all my efforts are devoted to concealing my concern from him.

When I beg him to take good care of himself, he says, “Oh, we shall live to a ripe old age: Fate did not bring us together without some purpose in mind.” “And I can still be of great use, even if people think I am finished and can do no more, just by being alive.” Earlier he had talked of Chopin’s phrase, “I shall not die like a pig,” which he dislikes greatly, observing what a wretched light it threw on the rest of his life; it made him think of his own death (our death), which will be different! He reads to me a page from Chopin about love relationships at the time of the breach with Mme Sand—they were indeed very curious.

This morning he thought about the French, with some sympathy for their present position, and says it would be remarkable all the same if common sense, so outstanding a quality among certain classes in France, the “concierge spirit,” were to prevail. Paris would, of course, always remain the world’s bazaar, but we must not forget that it was a Frenchman, Renan, who wrote the best book about the things which interest us. He reflects on the English and says the way they write poems about “glorious and victorious” makes him laugh, for that is not their way, even if they are efficient soldiers. At lunch much about the Battle of Leipzig, also the Battle of Waterloo, the Prussian spirit, youth, all of it vanished! R. also describes to us the Battle of Sedan.

Yesterday, while listening to Hungaria, which Lusch was playing, R. said: “Your father is much more of a musician than I am. I could never write anything like that, even my marches aim at something quite different.” We are amused by Princess Wittgenstein’s interpretations of my father’s works, but then R. says, “Those are all distortions, worldly distortions, one shouldn’t take any notice of them.”

R. does not go for a walk today, but just to the Wolzogens’ house. He does some work and in the evening no longer looks so worn out. He is pleased by the news that our friend Sulzer is taking over the leadership of the socialists: “We could do with a man like that in Germany,” he says. “The effort will surely be, not against possessions, but in favor of possessions for everybody.” R. tells us about people being expelled from Berlin, women among them. So it is true—they are preparing at one and the same time illuminations and emergency measures for the Emperor.

Busch’s book has arrived, I read some of it aloud, and R. is pleased by everything in it that has to do with practical life, for example, the Chancellor forbidding Herr Busch the noisy talk about strategy. He is also amused by the nuns with their lorgnettes: “That is modern life.” In the afternoon my hopes that R.’s health is improving give me a peculiar sense of well-being; as I watch the snow falling, I lose myself in thoughts of the future and praise Fate for my existence. (“Ich grolle nicht” [“I do not complain”]—this line, recalled to mind in some connection or other, leads R. to the unpleasant and unfitting aspects of lyric poetry. Something like Goethe’s “Zueignung” [“Dedication”], in which a picture of the whole of life is conveyed in tranquillity, is quite different, he says.)

Thursday, December 5:

R. got up once, but otherwise, he says, the night was tolerable. During the night he started Turgenev’s Virgin Soil. I tell him that I had heard him sighing deeply, had he been having sorrowful thoughts? “Probably just my general situation,” he says, “or some particular grievance!”

Speaking last night about the “Classical Walpurgis Night” he said that it always seems to him to grow shorter, he had imagined Nereus and the Nereids to be much longer; the humor in it becomes ever more apparent. On the other hand, the quotation from “Ideals” (in Chopin), activity which never tires, struck him as curious; why this in verse, when it is prose? Schiller could at times be terribly didactic.

In the afternoon he is unable to sleep, which worries me a lot; he goes for a walk in the palace gardens. At supper he has only tea with some eggs. I read to him from Busch’s book, and much of it interests him; his [Bismarck’s] sturdy, energetic, fearless, and naive character, untrammeled by any sort of prejudice, comes through everywhere, and R. says he must completely dominate his surroundings with his freedom of outlook, but there is never any sign of an idea, and also no idealism in his attitude toward things; his opinion of Wilhelm Tell deplorable.

I say good night to R. with a heart full of apprehension.

Friday, December 6:

Fidi ill for the past three days! R. again had no sleep, he got up during the night and read three chapters of the Turgenev book, in which one passage made him laugh out loud; he reads to me this very funny scene, in which the athletic diacre, wishing to say something friendly, makes such a loud noise that everyone is startled.

I implore R. not to work, and he promises me not to. He looks worn out, and only the fact that he has not lost his appetite gives me some comfort; but he does not sleep, in the afternoon, either, “in spite of the Tagblatt.”

Over coffee he comes back to Bismarck’s judgment on Wilhelm Tell: “As if the intention were to depict a hero!” And then he goes on, in his inimitable way, about the folk instinct which finds expression in this figure, who steels himself to the terrible deed, placing his faith in God, yet at the same time resolving on murder in a dark, unconscious way, not like a hero, hand on heart, but like a prowling wild beast which has to be destroyed. When R. says these splendid things, I observe that he should mention them in his next article, since the people themselves are just as little understood as Tell. R. replies, “I have already made a note of it.”

He stays indoors and reads Virgin Soil, which he finds interesting.

But again he did not rest in the afternoon, and he looks nervous. How difficult to control one’s worry, how inefficient I am becoming in everything! I have to ask W. to answer a letter for me!

In the evening I read some more Busch to R., and in the end he decides that the language of our greatest man is very vulgar, like tavern talk!

Saturday, December 7:

R.’s night was not a good one... He slept well and gently at first, but then he woke up, got out of bed, read something, lay down again, fell asleep but had spasms in his arms and legs; I took his hand in both of mine and with my pressure fought against his cramp! And truly it subsided, and I had the joy of watching over his sleep, for a few hours at least. What thoughts flooded into my mind as I did so! I sought to settle the children’s entire future.

Beforehand, a dream had comforted me: a star fell, I uttered the wish that is the only one I now have, the stars fell from the sky, and soon the whole square and the street (somewhat similar to Lindau) were full of stars; rain falling like a blessing. No wonder I was amazed when R. told me at lunchtime today he had had a dream: I came to him full of joy, telling him I had got a letter from Hans, and everything was arranged with regard to the children, and so once again he dreamed what was in my thoughts!

R. agrees with me that such a night seems like something from the distant past. But he feels rather better. He asks for tea, calls tea Catholicism, coffee Protestantism, tea is more elegant. The violin for dancing amuses him: “That’s what is meant by improvisation, when there is no melody in it.” But then during one exercise he thinks he can discern the theme of the big Leonore Overture. I do not remember what makes me think of the words “Yes, who in his heart’s sure keeping counts but one true soul his own” and to say, “Beethoven never possessed one!” “Few ever do. Goethe did not, either; he stopped searching because he did not think it possible, instead he turned to research and the pleasures of his intellect.”

When he embraces me before we part for our daily duties, he says, “There is only one soul on this earth, and I possess it.” He does not work but reads a little, and he looks better when he comes up to my room for lunch. Fidi also had a bad night, which casts a slight shadow over our mood, but, since there is no danger, our spirits gradually become as lively as ever.

Of politicians, referring to Bismarck, R. says, “Basically they all harbor a cynical pessimism which is made to look to others like optimism. Since he (B.) has the entire strength of Germany at his disposal, he really might have looked a little deeper” (yesterday he said, “Rome once had people like B. in masses”); “he is not an ideologist.” “Nap. III cherished an idea, the unification of the Latin races under one scepter, but there was no strength left in the Latin races.”

With regard to this letter he says, “It does squeeze everything together so.” I say I should like to read the American one. “Yes,” he says, “that is something for which the strength of this nation was preserved, as it were.”

I then tell him about K. Ritter’s König Koderich, signs of talent, but mixed with a corrupt, and apparently deliberate, negligence in language. R. then speaks about Ritter as an individual, his great gifts, his facility for music, and that is not a good thing: one should have to exert oneself with music, there are not many Mozarts about.

Then about his collected writings, how few people are buying them: “I must be completely despised in those bourgeois circles which buy expensive books, completely despised. But what a remarkable time that was, when Cotta knew he could do good business with Goethe’s writings! The press spoils everything nowadays.” He comes to Balzac, his grandiose pessimism, in Pierrette, for instance, in which even posterity is unjust. He laughs: “If we had a necromancer, there are all sorts of people we could conjure up.” Then he adds: “Though really we should have nothing to say to each other. I should have had nothing to say to Schopenhauer.”

When I tell him I believe B[alzac] would have understood him, in spite of being a Frenchman, R. doubts it and says again, “We should have nothing to say to each other.” He is pleased with Virgin Soil and says it could have been written by Balzac. I observe laughingly that it is now always he who reads the French books, and I the German. He goes for a walk; the air has become keener, and I hope it will do him good. In the evening he drinks his glass of grog upstairs with me in the gray room; I have arranged it so that it will please him a bit and raise his spirits; he talks of his rose hill (the meadow), which still gives him pleasure. Then I read Busch to him, little enjoyment!

Sunday, December 8:

A still worse night, practically no sleep, three hours of reading, then some walking and, as soon as he gets back into bed, spasms!... I rack my brains over what we should do, perhaps travel?... Wonderful how fresh he remains in spite of it all; before lunch he goes for a walk, and he has a good appetite.

He talks about Virgin Soil, which is very well observed. I tell him it seems to me that people here no longer observe things, they just exploit them, and he thinks I am right, says he will make use of it, deck himself out in my feathers! This leads us to the peacock, which has just “called out like an Alpine trumpeter.”

Dr. Landgraf refuses to see anything alarming in R.’s condition. R. makes a laughing remark about Turgenev’s tender consideration for Mme Viardot, in that he never calls the Jews by name but always talks of “les marchands.” “Incidentally, it was very impressive the way she got so heated about my Jewish pamphlet,” R. said yesterday.

He is not well, has to put up with some vexation over supper, and Herr Busch’s book is not of a kind to cheer him up. To bed with feelings of concern!

Monday, December 9:

My concern was not mistaken, he did not have a good night. We change our daily routine so that R. can go out for a while before lunch.

In the morning R. comes to the subject of original sin, saying, with reference to Nietzsche’s assertion that all are innocent, that this is correct as regards operare, but the sin lies in existence itself, the will to live, and the God without sin is the one for whom life is a sacrifice, and his life in consequence becomes a revelation.

Arrival of blankets from Vienna! Ordered by R. as a “belated gift for November 28.” I, touched and overemotional, succumb to indescribable sadness when I am alone and gaze out on the snow-covered earth. Lusch is ill, Fidi again unwell, sleepless nights, worrisome thoughts, and now a joy! The poor spirit breaks down and cries out for peace. But the cry is choked back, and when R. remarks at lunchtime that I am not looking well, control is restored.

Of Busch’s book R. says he would be ashamed to show it to foreigners. He talks about his “friend” Schmitt, saying the latter is now attacking him in the newspapers! “I have had fine friends” (thinking of K. Ritter, Nietzsche, etc.), “and one is always aware that the external enemies see through the hollowness of such relationships, however glowing at the outset, and rejoice.”

From L.’s indisposition R. comes to talk about the girls and says how greatly he was touched, back in the summer, when he had been cross with the children and Loldi, lying in her bed, had pressed him to her; he had felt her little breasts against him, and this revelation of maidenliness had touched him like an intimation of Fate.

Tuesday, December 10:

Not a very good night for R., he got up once, but he does not complain in the morning, wants to do some work, which worries me, but “I don’t deserve my happiness otherwise.”

At lunch he asks whether in his Faust Symphony Berlioz let the Walpurgis Night, the “gliding and gleaming” of the witches, escape him: “If so, he was very silly.” He says Romeo et Juliette is the work of a bungler, in spite of Berlioz’s great talent, and if “the stuttering Count” (Du Moulin) had put such a thing in front of him, he would have received a proper dressing down.

R. goes for a walk and says, “When I whistle for the dogs, they just say ‘Fiddlesticks.’ ” He recommends Turgenev’s Virgin Soil quite strongly to me, says it aroused very peculiar feelings in him because he himself had been through these revolutionary experiences, the lack of contact with the people.

“Then,” he says, “a genuine love, a happy marriage, who knows anything about that?... Young writers nowadays use their powers to denigrate what was formerly held in high regard, but they don’t know the reality.”

In the evening friend W. sends over an article in the National-Zeitung about the law against profiteers, very pretentious rubbish quoting Disraeli’s Tancred. Not worth bothering about. R. gives me great pleasure by playing his funeral music for Weber’s reburial; we then talk about this Weberian melody, its purity and chastity; every time I think of it, I see before my eyes a blossoming virgin, lovely in her modesty, whereas with Beethoven I receive no vision at all: he is just everywhere, like the great god Pan. R. agrees with me, saying it is like contrasting Shakespeare with Schiller.

R. loses himself in memories of this ceremony, “the most successful of my whole life.” After that we play the Idyll as a piano duet. We go upstairs in happy, indeed very cheerful, spirits, and when I tell R. I intend to send Glasenapp the stuffed pheasant, he says hardly does a malheur occur in Wahnfried but Glasenapp must be made a present of it, stuffed!

Wednesday, December 11:

R. again had to get up once. All the same, he is cheerful and does not complain about these nightly disturbances. He goes for a walk in the morning, and this seems to do him good. As always much merriment at lunch! Of Fidi he says, “We two no longer pay any attention to each other, because we both crack jokes.”

R. remarks, “Fidi must have a tremendous itch in his brain.” And it is true, the dear boy has all kinds of nice ideas which I should much like to write down here, if I did not regard myself as being in the service of another.

When we let our Putz into the dining room and he dances around the table, R. remembers Robber in Boulogne who once, in his joy when R. encountered him, ran three times around the great square with the shops, like a mad thing, the huge creature looked so extraordinary! R. begins his “Retrospect” of the Bayreuth festival.

In the evening we tell friend Wolzogen our impressions of Busch’s book, the coarseness it reveals, and R. says that today he was in Angermann’s and saw such a handsome, distinguished, and candid-looking officer; he asked himself: “But what is it for? What use is made of such men? All the people at the top are such pitiful creatures.” He praises Turgenev’s book and says at times it really moved him.

Then he once again plays the Weber funeral music and speaks of the effect Weber had on him: “He was my begetter, it was he who aroused my passion for music. He revealed to me what wind instruments can do, for instance, the entrance of a clarinet, what an effect that can make. I wish someone could have seen me as a child when I watched Der Freischütz being performed in the small, old theater under Weber’s direction. It is a true blessing to have received in childhood such an impression of one of God’s chosen spirits.”

From here to Tristan; I had asked for the Prelude to Parsifal, but R. said he would prefer to play Tristan. He goes through the love scene and, when this is concluded, exclaims: “What extraordinary stuff it is! To imagine that as a repertory opera, it’s too absurd! It can never become popular.” I dispute this, saying that it was above all Tristan and Isolde which won him his true supporters, and that it is precisely this spun-out musical evocation of love which provides people with the magic they unconsciously seek in the theater. “Yes,” says R., “in a first-rate performance of it.”

Then he says: “This shows a pair of lovers aglow at the height of sin; they do not confess it to each other, but they feel there is only one escape, through death; first they ask each other, ‘How did it come about, when we loved each other from the start, that we parted?’ Then she does not wish to contemplate the death he has resolved on for them, until he persuades her, and both then find their highest happiness in this decision. Who can follow all that?”

I maintain that everyone who has ever been in love, even if it was a false or foolish love, must have felt the tragedy of love and of life, and will respond to the magic; he will feel increasingly liberated from his burdens, transformed by inner impressions which, slumbering inside him, now awake to enlighten him. R. laughs and says, “I must tell you what Meyerbeer replied to me when I expressed to him my feeling that the staging of the bathing girls’ scene in Les Huguenots did not match the music: ‘Maybe, Herr Wagner, but not everyone has as much imagination as you.’ ”

I say that Wotan’s sufferings are much less easily understandable, his farewell to Brünnhilde undoubtedly only made so for most people through the music. R. says I am quite right, and that is what he himself thought at first; also the music, even if he did take it to the utmost limits, always remains melodious. Later, when we are already upstairs, he says he had felt the urge to express himself symphonically for once, and that led to Tristan.

Thursday, December 12:

R. had a tolerable night; he got up only once. He is now working on his article; he says it is actually absurd to say anything more about the festival, but he wants to do it for Wolzogen's sake. I am now reading Turgenev's book on his recommendation, and with great interest, too; we talk a lot about it.

In the evening Herr R[ubinstein] is here again; R. plays the Idyll with him as a piano duet, quite wonderful. Afterward he enlarges upon the piano scores, which are intended only as intelligent indications, and one must take care not to break the melodic line by putting in all the middle voices, but try always to provide the outlines.

When we are alone, R. wants to know why, "when really we want to stay silent. Fate insists on turning us both into downright chatterers!" He talked a lot with Herr R. about all sorts of things - Raff and Hellmesberger and [Amalie] Materna. Regarding the Idyll he says: "I ought not to have published it. Everything one publishes is cast before swine, but now and again a blind hen comes along and finds the pearl." (During the afternoon he wrote to Frl. Uhlig.) When we are upstairs, R. says of the Idyll, "It is the only work of mine which comes straight from my life; I could write a program for it down to the last detail."

Friday, December 13:

R. had a good night. "I ought to sacrifice a cock," he says. "Poor Berlioz, whose head is still plucked bare - he looks like the monk in the rose garden."

We come to the subject of chronicles. He used to own the chronicles of the city of Cologne, in rhyme, and he liked them; he does not know the chronicles of the emperors, but feels they should provide the foundation for the language used in dramas dealing with those times. Two days ago, when I told him about the curious language in K. Ritter's drama, he pointed out how much wiser Goethe had been to use doggerel verse in Faust. R. says he wonders whether the tremendous popular element in Goethe has been sufficiently appreciated.

Fine wintry weather. R. goes for a walk before lunch, the children go skating. At lunch we spoke about the novel; R. says, "I feel as if I have known such people, and this movement, which is really nothing at all but nevertheless upsets the characters." In the evening R. asks me to read the book aloud from the point I have reached.

Concerning the revolutionary matters in it, he says: "I was almost at the point of hawking pamphlets myself! And when I think of all the things I told Minna, such as that the movement was being built up somewhere else, and that it was bound to happen that people like me would be needed, and that I should be appointed secretary of the provisional government. I had to put it to her in the form of a permanent appointment, and at the same time humbug myself. But all the same I could not agree with your father when he said to me curtly in Weimar, 'Admit you've been foolish.'"

When it comes up in conversation that the Emperor is now so well that he intends to take part again in a hunt, R. says, "Yes, that's all they can think of." And a little later he says, "I was on the point of writing a witty remark - 'Biarritz was after all nothing more than tossing a fox in a blanket' - but I won't do it." At the conclusion of our reading he says to me, "It often occurs to a man that women are much better than he is, that a woman is much more of a whole than he; for a man, a woman is an episode" - he looks at me and adds, "I am not talking about us now" - "but for a woman the man is everything, and when the thing for which a man gives up a woman turns out to be nothing, he must feel very contemptible." At the first stage of saying good night he remarks, "Don't call up a Solomin!" I: "I hope your feelings for me are not the same as Nezhdanov's." He, laughing: "It would be a bit late to start that." Much merriment.

Saturday, December 14:

R. slept well, though he woke very early. Toward noon he complains of tightness in his chest ("I have a mouse scurrying about in my heart, lungs, and liver," he says at lunch; though he means it as a joke, it gnaws at my heart). He went out for a walk in the palace gardens; it is very cold - is this advisable?

He has done some work on his Retrospect and says that, though only creative work can satisfy him, nevertheless he finds pleasure in the artistic form which can be given to a descriptive account such as this. This is why he is working on it slowly, he adds; he will neither complain nor accuse, nor will he use any bitter expressions.

When we meet again, he returning from Angermann's, where he had an appointment with friend W., and I from making a few odd purchases, such divine words escape his lips that I do not dare write them down. And even if I did dare write the words, how could I convey the soul behind them which turned them to searing flame in my heart? ... I hardly dare even think of it, and yet cannot stop thinking of it - oh, thou earthly bliss of love, so immense, so timid, I can only cherish thee and, concealing thy treasures in the depths of my soul, appear to forget thee!

In the evening the W.'s come, and R. tells me his young friend told him that his family had settled in Bayreuth 200 years ago (a Frl. Ruckdeschel was mentioned who had written the funeral ode for a Wolzogen; R. says one still finds these genuine old German names in the small towns, and remarks laughingly that this poetess must certainly have been an ancestress of the present schoolmaster Ruckdeschel - the family had a pedantic streak). R. says he spoke appreciatively of Wolzogen and how retiring he is, the way in which, looking neither to right nor to left, he has retired from the world to subordinate himself to a single person.

He also tells me, "W. and I decided that Schopenhauer and Goethe were quite right about melody, and, however absurd Goethe's desire to see his Helena set to music by Rossini might seem, his instinct had been right to a certain extent." This all arose in connection with an article by friend Pohl in which Schumann is mentioned. With regard to him, R. says: "As if a genius says to himself, 'This is the direction I shall take, this is what I mean to do!' It's inspiration he needs, melodies. In Schumann there is not a single melody, and that's why I place Schubert so high above him." He then talks once more of the great impression Turgenev's novel made on him, and also of his Retrospect: he is vexed at feeling shy now about mentioning the Jews, "just out of consideration for three or four of them," and then, in his usual manner of changing rapidly from annoyance to joking, he exclaims, "Davidsohn gave me a cigar holder!"

In the afternoon he had already mentioned the delight he gets from working out his article, his delight in form, and he goes on about it in the evening. During the afternoon he was very preoccupied (I spoke a certain name, and he asked me for the name of Count Magnis, whom he is mentioning in his article; it had nothing to do with what I had said), and I begged him urgently not to do any work. He enjoyed it, he replied. In the morning he told me that by the end of the year he would have reached Parsifal's anointment, and then the rest would follow. When I tell him I am looking forward to Titurel's funeral, he says, "That is already finished - as good as finished." Before that he said, "I shall still one day write my mourning music for the fallen, and its motto will be 'My captain, I am dying for Germany.'" (Words spoken by a dying soldier in 1870.) Over coffee discussed whether we might ask the King to replace Perfall with someone like Prince Liechtenstein. Final resolve: always to let things go the way they want to go - and go bad in the process.

To conclude the evening he takes out Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues and plays several of them. "That is music," he exclaims after one of the preludes, "music eo ipso." - "He is totally unique," he exclaims after another, "and what accents it has! He knew all about those, though there are no markings, no sforzati." R. considers the 48 Preludes and Fugues to be the quintessence of Bach. When we are lying beside each other in bed, I whisper the words "Oh, sink down, night of love!" R.: "Nobody has ever commented on my identifying the highest enjoyment of love with obliviousness of the world." Here there is oblivion, and the world is abolished.

Sunday, December 15:

"Poor old dear, dear Odysseus . . . Odysseus, adieu!" Thus I hear R. speaking in compassionate tones during the night; at the time he cannot remember why, and in the morning, when I tell him about it again, he says, "Yes, that was really a very pleasant encounter." We recall that yesterday at lunch he mentioned Laertes and said, "A very odd fellow, letting the suitors ruin his kingdom and not bothering his head about anything!" He had been reminded of Laertes by our gardener, Rausch. We had also talked about my reading the Odyssey to the children, and the dream could have arisen out of that. In the night, when I told R. about it, he said, "At any rate better than dreaming of a woman I loved more than you!" In the morning he cannot remember this, either.

We talk about the book Odysseus, the God of Spring, which vexed me at first, since it seems to destroy the personal relationships, but is nevertheless very good; Elpenor and all the women, Calypso, Circe - "there is something solicitous, withdrawn about them," says R., "and Laertes is the embodiment of winter."

(Another curious thing during the night: when I tell him about his dream and he answers me, still half asleep, he also says in an undertone, as if to himself, "Oh, these philologists, when they approach the problem of Homer, so uncertain of themselves, splitting hairs - wretched fellows.")

In the morning he works on his article, and says that he wrote about the King today, very noble. Yesterday he observed, "I have not mentioned you, though in the interests of truth I really should." He says he has featured Mimi very prominently. Yesterday evening he came to the subject of Auber and said he was glad that in his article he had presented him as such a significant figure, particularly with regard to La Muette - Spontini was a bungler by comparison. What that had really been was a sigh of relief from the people, once the Napoleonic oppression was lifted, but a sigh that led to nothing. "A heartless fellow, Auber, but a genius." Then about the laboriousness of all revolutions.

When I tell him that I have finished Turgenev's book, he discusses it with me in detail and says (regarding Sipniagin), "I realized from this book that the Russian aristocrats did at least go to the trouble of giving themselves certain airs; here they don't even do that - they're just vulgar." Yesterday he spoke very disgustedly about the Grand Duchess of Baden - not that she is vulgar, but that she is one of those treacherous people who appear to take an interest in something but do nothing to prove it: "A block off the old chip," he concludes with a laugh.

Heavy snowfall, delight in it. R. says, "It's like an ornament, like lace; with rain it's just needles." He does go for a walk in the afternoon, and to Angermann's, but he again feels tightness in his chest and has no desire to eat. The Rheingold, sent by Herr Albert, did not agree with him. "I feel like dying," he says to the children, and when a shadow passes across my face, he says with a laugh: "That's just to frighten them, so they'll be good. That's what I always did with the Mrazecks - I threatened them with my death. Then they left me in peace." It was not the joke, but the fact that he was unwell that troubled me.

In the evening friend Wolz., Josef R., and Herr Kellermann. R. talked about his overture in C major, in 4/4 time, which he regrets having lost; he says it was not all that bad, and it contained the Holst. chord (interrupted cadence). Herr Kellermann plays a polonaise by my father, which R. finds very good: "It is quite worthy of the Chopin ones." J. R. first of all plays organ fugues by Bach (A minor, C minor), very well - "a little overdramatized," says R., but he enjoys them greatly - then a Prelude in F-sharp Minor (No. 13) from the 48 Preludes and Fugues; since this reminds us of Die Meistersinger ("continuation of Bach"), R. takes out the collection of pieces from Die Meistersinger, and with these brings the evening to a splendid close. But he says, "This work was more or less cast to the swine; it brought me nothing." I feel that with all such works it is as with Hamlet; recently R. and I laughed at the way people (in this case Turgenev) talk of a Hamlet-like character, a Russian Hamlet, as if this figure had been real, not something created by a poet; and so will it be with his Sachs and his Siegfried; they will be regarded as real people and for that very reason will not be judged aesthetically. To end the evening he reads to us his Retrospect, or, rather, the first pages of it, so simple in its truth, so true in its simplicity. If only his health were better! ...

Monday, December 16:

R. did not sleep badly, but he had an ugly dream in the early morning: I had propped a clasp knife on my nose and was in a sarcastic mood. He does not look too tired. The Retrospect has inevitably left a mood of heaviness behind. "What the story tells," R. exclaims, "one can see from our leaders, the Emperor, the princes, Bismarck." Yesterday evening he said, "The princes are entirely to blame." Of Bismarck he says, "A bad man."

I observe that C. Frantz was not far wrong with his "Pomeranian Junker." "He certainly was not. - What does a Junker of that sort know about Germany?"

When R. laughed about his piano playing yesterday, I said to him, "And yet now I can really listen to nobody except you." He laughs and says, "It's my magic," and points to his leathery thumb (which is a bit rough). The falling snow, silent, thick, and pure, invites one to seek a still, cozy refuge. Oh, gleaming white peace, protect and warm my poor heart, consumed by love, full of sprouting worries and fears, that death may appear to it like springtime! ...

After lunch, at which R. has little appetite, I ask him how he feels. "Bursting with health," he answers. He is still going out of doors twice a day. In the evening a dance at Wahnfried! Ten young officers and ten girls. R. orders the polonaise to be danced from the hall into his salon, where he plays for it, while Herr Kellermann, not noticing, continues playing in my room. The rest of the music is played by "Memel and Schwemel," as R. calls our two fiddlers.

He sticks photographs in my album, until I ask him to do no more, but to wait until the collection is complete. Looking at A. Muller's house, which has just been drawn for me and in which he lived on the fifth floor, he says, "On my first Sunday I gazed out of the window and heard a child say, 'D' Kirch isch us' ('Church is over'), and I thought to myself, 'Look out, things will start happening.'"

Tuesday, December 17:

A rather stormy night, R. managed in the end to get some sleep, which relieved me of my worry that I might have demanded too much of him with such an evening. But so great is my happiness at seeing him at last get some rest that my own sleeplessness has left no fatigue behind.

At lunch R. speaks of his utter unwillingness to say anything more, for he has already said it all; he tells me he has just been reading his essay Actors and Singers and sees how thoroughly he has already dealt with the connection between art and performance, with Shakespeare, with Schiller. And all for nothing. "The whole nation is bad," he exclaims, "from top to bottom." He says he regrets having summoned Wolz. here - the Blatter will have to cease publication, we can find no contributors, he himself has nothing more to say. I tell him that, even if the Blatter were to cease publication, W. would still be glad to have come here, in order to be living near him. He admits this is so, and the conversation passes on to the artists, whom he, R., has always regarded as his sole support, the only source of power still available to him - yet to what uses is it now being put!....

When I tell him I should like to be rich so that we could stage Parsifal just for ourselves and the King, R. says with a sigh, "That's a nice thought." He tells me about the Emperor's speeches and says: "Who drove out the princes? When did the German people ever even think of driving out its princes? And the man who says this has himself dethroned three princes from the oldest families! And nobody said a word about it. Indeed, if anyone had tried, he would have been accused of treason." At lunch R. made Lusch happy by remarking that in her dancing she moved well and showed a good, confident manner. R. rests for a while and then goes to Angermann's. On his return he tells me that the Israelite Karpeles was the only one to remember that today is Beethoven's birthday!

He says he got absorbed with Josef Rub. in a conversation about Catholicism; then he noticed that other people were listening and thought to himself that Angermann's was probably not the right place for such topics. In the evening, when friend W. and R. visit us, I repeat what the paper hanger said to me today about the sad state of industry in Germany: everywhere complaints that we are being oppressed. R. returns to the Emperor's speeches. "In order to go hunting he starts doing a bit of ruling again! And he recommends as much religion as possible." He describes with heart-rending indignation the neglect of German interests: "They introduce the gold standard," he exclaims, "we lose our silver and have to buy foreign gold! They make a coin which does not correspond to any other; we have free trade, while all other nations have protective tariffs. It is really disgraceful! And we Germans just look on, nobody says a word, though it is as clear as daylight - nothing but servility and fear. It serves us right, too - it is our punishment for the way we are, for our gloating, our indolence. Borne was quite right when he compared the Germans with a crocodile, which one can kick as much as one pleases, nothing has any effect."

I say we should stop discussing this sad theme; it is too dismal. When I hear R. talking like this, see his pained and angry expression, it takes my breath away. Turning to the piano, he concluded the conversation: "'Shall We Hope?' - the last thing I shall write, and I shall give it the motto, 'We do not hope, but we should like to.'" We move on to Bach, start the 48 Preludes and Fugues from the beginning and play the first six. R. gives Herr R. directions; after the first he says the remarkable thing about these works is that one can interpret them in different ways - this first prelude, for instance, sentimentally a la Gounod or fast and vigorous in organ style. I ask Herr R. to note down at once in pencil everything that R. says, but he does not seem able to do it properly, and so all I can say about the Fugue in D Major is that he calls it the "Mayor" and says the figuration should arouse a feeling of trepidation; the countertheme he calls the "Mayoress," and to the concluding bars he sings the words "My will has been done." The sixth fugue, in D minor, is the one he finds most wonderful: "Nothing can surpass that. It does not look worked out. What a command he has over his means of expression, using them just as his inspiration demands! And in those times, imagine - the time of Frederick the Great's father and his smokers' gatherings!" He talks about Bach's fate, his return from a journey to find his wife already dead and buried, and in this connection recalls Ranee, the founder of the Trappist order. Afterward he declares that these preludes and fugues and the motets are probably the most consummate of Bach's works; as regards the complete Passion, he cannot say whether it should be considered their equal, but - he adds - it was performed in church, by the congregation, and that is how it should be. Then we reminisce about Switzerland, about Lucerne, the beauty of the surroundings, the Richter episodes (also at table), with much merriment. R. says a French "marchand d'habits" ["clothier"] is now living in Tribschen, and we laugh afterward because on account of Rubin, he fell back on Turgenev's capers. He also talked about his ascent of the Faulhorn, which he made in bad weather, but he had the reward of being able to watch an eagle for a long time. I had quoted a line from the Indian play The Rise of the Moon of Intellect which had impressed itself on my mind through its profundity: "The world, disunited in itself, is united with God." R. says, "That is quite true, but it is not so easy to understand or to explain."

Wednesday, December 18:

R. had a good night. We return to the subject of Bach, and he says that in his youth he was prompted by the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann to look into these compositions, searching for mysticism, but all he had really felt was boredom. He introduced this remark by exclaiming, "How necessary education is in all things!"

He works on his Retrospect, then he goes for a walk before lunch in intense cold. He tells me he would like to make music again, and since we are talking about Fidi, who is uncommonly bright, R. says, "Wait and see, when I have completed the score of Parsifal with much amore, I shall occupy myself with the education of my boy." He also goes out in the afternoon, to Angermann's, but this outing does not seem to agree with him; he complains of tightness in the chest, says jokingly that he has hardening of the arteries, but this joke takes my breath away.

In the evening Bach again, but this time I do not really hear the music, my thoughts are too far away. But I hear R.'s words about it. Of the 7th prelude (E-flat Major) he says: "That is Wotan - it and especially the first 9 bars must be played wildly. The ensuing fugue is the pacification, the good wife who dresses nicely, calms her husband down." Of the 8th prelude R. says, "I play that in a more moonlit way, never allowing the twilight to lift." The following fugue R. considers the most remarkable of all; he says it is extraordinarily elaborate, yet so full of feeling: "What strettos and augmentations it has - and what accents!" For him, he says, it is the quintessence of fugue, as fugues in his own album, which he regrets having lost, would clearly have shown.

And when today's six have been played he exclaims, "That is music in its true essence; everything we compose is applied music - a rondo by Hummel, for instance, is Bach diluted so-and-so many times, in the way one dilutes essence of roses so-and-so many times to obtain the familiar fragrance." "To give continuity to a dance melody - that is what he has succeeded in doing here; later one used figurations to isolate, to link." He explains to the children (Lusch and Boni) what a fugue is. Then he says, "Let us now play some applied Bach," and takes out the piano-duet arrangement of the Prelude; then, since his fingers are not working well, he asks Herr R. to play it solo; he does it very nicely, but for me R.'s participation is priceless, irreplaceable, for he sets the tempo. Right away, for instance, Herr R. played the first theme too broadly. R. says, "It is tempo which gives a performance its soul" - and how difficult it is to learn! He tells us that he once made a precise study of it, that they rehearsed the Eroica in Leipzig with a double-bass player, Pogner, also that the F Major once went well with Richter.

Infinite delight in Die Meistersinger. "And I, stupid fellow that I am," R. exclaims, "had on my return from France to throw it away on such a miserable nation as the Germans! Well, they haven't yet heard the last of it from me." ...

Thursday, December 19:

R. had a somewhat restless night, but on the whole not a bad one; he talked in his sleep about military music. For me the night brought back worry in a terrible form - oh, once Siegfried is set on the right path, to die blissfully with him - from the appearance to the actuality! ... I feel how remote I am now from the birth which seems to be my own - all the rest of life's trials and all its petty troubles scarcely affect me any more, just one thing dominates my entire existence, and it is only by force that I maintain the appearance of calm.

R. has finished his Retrospect today. He goes in bright sunshine for a walk in the palace gardens, where the children are skating, except for Evchen, who is indisposed. R. spent some time at Eva's bedside and came away very touched by the child, who, though restless and unable to sleep, was bearing it all patiently. He says he cannot stand seeing the children ill: "They are usually so beautiful when they are suffering." Over dessert R. tells me of a letter from Frl. Uhlig in reply to the dispatch of the laurel wreath; this letter so upsets R. that he cannot rest in the afternoon.

At six o'clock he reads to us (W. and me) his Retrospect, which gives me great delight; I congratulate him on the idea of the tablet, which has saved him from having to mention everyone by name and hand out compliments right and left. Herr Neumann has invited R. to conduct a concert in Leipzig in support of the pension fund. In the evening a Frl. Steinbach from Vienna sings to us R.'s Träume and my father's "Es muss ein Wunderbares sein". R. instructs her how to sing the former, with long-sustained breathing, and the resulting performance is at once different, so very, very different.

After that Herr R. plays us three preludes and fugues; R. says of the theme of the 13th fugue that it is like the proclamation of a gospel; in general, he advises Herr Ru. not to emphasize the middle voices too strongly, so that the melody may stand out nicely. Then R. goes through Mozart's E-flat Major Symphony with Herr Rub. and gives him directions for its execution - for example, to play the second third in the Adagio with some emphasis: this gives significance to the whole theme, whereas it usually sounds rather trivial. R. takes great delight in this symphony and says: "So many ideas, so many accents! Though these things are perhaps not completely satisfying as works of art, there is always delight to be taken from communing with the spirit which shines through them."

R. tells us that, when he was alone in Angermann's, the barmaid came up to him and said it was terrible that Alexa was going on so long and that she did not slam the door shut today. R. agrees with her. We laugh heartily at the people's concern over this story.

Friday, December 20:

R. had a good night, but he complains of tightness on the left side. The doctor denies any suggestion of a lung or heart ailment. Yesterday R. received a calendar from our printer Bonfantini; he looks up his birthday and sees that it falls on Ascension Day: "So I shall probably also ascend to Heaven then." When, toward evening, he says something similar in front of Wolz. and I tell him he is wrong to do so, he jokes: "It's to keep you all respectful" - no, he said that on some previous occasion - "It's to keep your sympathies aroused!"

Sounds of music in Wahnfried again, and when R. parts from me around noon, he says: "I have been playing the last pages of Parsifal. I've never heard any music like it. But I need an awful lot of time!" He adds, "It moved me very much." At lunch we discuss the affair of the Wurzburg student. R. says the sergeant need only have read Busch's book, where there is talk of nothing else but shooting people down. He says it is a matter of behaving as if we were in a state of war, but everything is like that nowadays in our country; he does not defend the student's conduct, and undoubtedly discipline is now very good in the army, but this was treating a person as if he were cattle.

Talking of Parsifal, R. says, "The longer one lives, the longer one has to live - I need a great deal of time." At supper we talk about old times, the sojourn in Biebrich, the pipe that smoked, the servant girl Lieschen, for whom he spoke up when she was falsely accused of something or other, and who, though completely exonerated, still kept on weeping: "Just think, if I hadn't found such a good master, and how many don't find them -" she said. Then his landlord Frickhafner, "the hypochondriac," who was always quarreling with his old housekeeper and one day shouted to her over the banisters, "You're as stupid as an owl!" whereupon R., who happened to be there, called up, "You mean as rude as an owl!"

An unpleasant incident with Herr Kellermann, who goes off to practice for the amateur concert instead of staying for the talk on Bach's fugues. R., very annoyed, tells him his piano playing there is not worth a jot, whereas here he might learn something. Herr K. goes, but R. is very agitated; as he says, he can never tell a person the truth calmly and unconcernedly, and that is why he prefers to avoid such encounters. Now he is sorry about it, or, rather, he is upset, and much time passes before we can settle down to Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues. R. describes the 17th fugue as a dance, and traces a few steps to the first bars, then says it is freer in form, already approaching the sonata. Prelude 18 enchants and moves one, and its fugue R. calls a fairy tale told by the grandmother in the Edda. The theme is expressive of complete resignation, and he sings some words to it, which end, "And so it then must be." In the 19th prelude he laughs over the fifths and says, "Bach wrote those deliberately, saying, 'People know what a musician I am, and they know that when I write something like this, I do it on purpose, for the sake of the idea.'" Concerning the 20th fugue, he says Bach must first have thought of it in four voices, then arranged it for the piano. It is such things, he says, that brought Bach into disrepute and caused his teacher Weinlig to refuse to have anything to do with him. Referring to one of the fugues between nos. 16 and 20, R. says it is curious how Bach sometimes reeled off the most significant themes as if on a spinning wheel, "he does not make anything of them." Then, to our great enjoyment, Mozart's C Major Symphony (not the Jupiter), which R. recalls having heard played as entr'acte music amid the bangings of students who wanted the play to begin.

Saturday, December 21:

R. got up once during the night but was on the whole not dissatisfied with it. At lunch I notice, however, that he is very absorbed. He tells me he has been going through his manuscript: I did not yet know Gurnemanz's joy when he recognizes the spear. "He howls for joy, and the fifths I've got there, you'll be amazed!" ... R. is touchingly kind to Herr K., and Herr Jager comes for coffee, telling us quite a lot about Vienna.

R. puts off the Bach evening, saying he wants to be alone. Things are again brewing inside him, arousing my fears: may this terrible inner process not prove a strain on him! He says: "All I want now is to finish Parsifal, then everything will be all right. Let's hope it won't be a success and people won't insist on founding my school for me, for then I should be lost." Previously he told me that he had read Actors and Singers, and "I was vexed that I should be expected to say anything beyond that."

In the evening we are all by ourselves, R. and I. "Oh, how much good it does me not to feel cramped!" he says. "All talk with other people is an affectation." Each of us takes a volume by Goethe (Xenien), and we take turns reading to each other; R. is particularly amused by "Oh, were I but rid in my halls of Isis and Osiris." After I read to R. Goethe's poems about Indian idols, he says how natural it seems to him to regard animals as divine, how noble they appear in comparison with human beings, and more beautiful, too. "The human being with all his reason is just like that dog with many heads! ... Only in very rare cases can speech express the soul, and so silence is much nobler." A very cheerful, quiet evening, and R. looks well when we part.

Sunday, December 22:

R. slept tolerably well. He regrets that he will no longer hear the melancholy fiddling, for today is the final dancing lesson. That was yesterday; it was yesterday when the Robber and the Little Doll played their fiddles for the last time!

Arrival of friend Seidl (Herr Jager arrived yesterday). All the reports on Vienna are dismal, and I wish none of it reached R.'s ears. But Seidl pleases us with his simple and truthful nature and his correct judgment. Arrival of the pictures from Munich, memories; regarding the house on Briennerstrasse, R. says: “It looked for a while as if that would last, as if things would be all right - but no, it was horrible! The only places where life was peaceful and happy were Tribschen, the Dammallee, the Fantaisie, and here. I am glad that I have you so quietly all to myself.”

Bach in the evening. Of the Prelude in B major (No. 23), R. says, “This is full of hope, spring must be coming after all.” The 24th prelude he thinks should be taken “like a heartfelt lament”; he says he would like to hear it sung by someone like Catalani, with words - one would see what an impression that would make. He advises Rubinstein always to bring out the melodic line very clearly and says he feels almost like writing words for it himself. I observe that the text would have to be religious, a kind of offertory, and he agrees. He wants the ensuing fugue taken broadly, then gradually quickening. “These pieces are riddles,” he says, “one must look at them, follow the melody; he has really lavished melody on them.” After this Herr R. plays us one of his “Pictures,” and finally we hear Die Meistersinger, the concluding passages of the second and third acts. Divine impressions, Sachs radiating nobility, dispassionateness. I wish I could describe R.'s countenance when he is playing such things, his eyes opened wide, his gaze ranging ever farther, his brow illumined!

Monday, December 23:

R. did not sleep too badly, but he complains of tightness in the chest and looks run down. He did too much yesterday. But at lunch R. is cheerful, though talking tires him; he laughs a great deal over the story of the death of the conductor Proch, who, shortly before his demise, read in a newspaper that he was dying: “Now I don’t know whether I should drink my coffee or not,” he said, and a few hours later he was dead! (R. asks whether he perhaps died of a “broken” heart.) He says at lunch, “It is really curious that both the Pommerania and the Grosser Kurfürst had to sink.”

We spend all day alone together, and a curious thing happens: looking for something upstairs in the Parnassus room, I catch sight of a volume of Hoffmann’s life and think to myself that R. might perhaps like to glance through it. When I go downstairs, R. tells me that he has just been reading Hoffmann’s biography. I: “How is that possible? It is upstairs.” R.: “No, downstairs, it is on my table, at any rate the second volume, which is what I read.” Our thoughts, dreams, desires, so interwoven that every moment seems like an intimation of eternity!

In the evening I read to R. from the biography and note in it that it was his uncle who visited Hoffmann; then, when the overture in celebration of victory is mentioned, R. says, “I played that as a piano duet with my uncle, I can still remember the allies embracing.” He also mentions the name Hoffmann assumed for it.

Tuesday, December 24:

R. had a bad night, but an absurd dream amuses him: his niece Johanna wanted to sing Brünnhilde, but she could not, and she draped herself in a long robe made of our bedroom curtain material, trying to compensate for her inadequate singing with striking gestures, and looking all the time at R.

Christmas activities. R. says at lunch that he had yet another dream, that “the Robber” (one of the fiddlers who played for the elder girls’ dancing lesson in the morning; the second fiddler the children called “the Little Doll”) was playing something from Parsifal downstairs. R. does not look too worn out at lunch, and in the evening, after the distribution of presents, he is in very high spirits; he tells me that in the palace gardens Jager fell down in the snow; he was taken to Stutzer’s tavern and Schnappauf was sent for, but it was nothing, and afterward Wolz., Seidl, Jager, Rubinstein, and he formed a Serapion Pact. We go to bed early, R. observing that yesterday’s reading about the death of Hoffmann had not been a good preparation for the previous night. But he is looking well. The Christmas tree is pushed to one side and the children clear away their things, for there is to be a party in Wahnfried tomorrow evening.

Wednesday, December 25:

Oh, that one has nothing but words, words! This threadbare language for such joys, such bliss! I feel reluctant to write about it; there is no one to whom I wish to tell what happened today. . . . The pen slipped from my fingers; I now take it up again (noted at foot of page: “Friday the 27th”) to preserve for my children what has perhaps not stamped itself sharply enough on their memories.

Early in the morning I hear some rustling and think to myself that preparations are being made for the evening, since R. has promised me a party this evening, and last night they had to clear the presents away. Then Siegfried comes skipping into the room and says softly, “Mama, Papa wants you to know that the Robber is playing something from Parsifal,” and then the Prelude begins, really begins, and is played to the end, while my heart reels in bliss!

And then R. comes to my bed, asks me not to weep or expire, jokes gaily, undresses and gets into bed, breakfasts again with me (he had already breakfasted with Lusch at 7 o’clock), and talks and talks. The orchestra from Meiningen is here, he says; there is to be a house concert this evening, the Zur Weihe des Hauses Overture, the F major Symphony; yesterday there were two rehearsals, morning and afternoon, and all those things - the dream about the Robber, Jager’s fall, the Serapion Pact - were fibs! But the rehearsals cured him; he greatly enjoyed them. He went to the first feeling languid after his bad night, but with the Overture it was all forgotten. He crept home very slowly (he did not want to order a carriage, lest he attract my attention with the sound of its wheels), and when Brange saw him wrapped up in furs, she almost tore him to bits, wanting to get the fur off him, as if she thought something must have happened to him.

What can I say to all this? I hold in my hands the baton with which he has just been conducting, and the fan which he gave me along with other lovely things, and do not know whether to utter cries of joy or to expire. Death alone could express my feelings; life can scarcely contain them, and so I remain silent, silent, hearing as if from the farthest reaches of Heaven things no mortal being - not even you, my Siegfried - can be allowed to hear from my lips. . . .

At eleven o’clock rehearsal in Wahnfried. Introduction to the Zur Weihe des Hauses Overture, which, so curiously unsuited to the Josefstadt Theater, R. explains to me by saying that Beethoven probably thought of it as a suburban people’s theater, and had imagined and described in the introduction Emperor Joseph, the people’s friend, who wanted to drive out the Jesuits, whereupon popular acclamation, delirium! . . . After the Overture, the Idyll and Egmont, and the Andante and Presto from the A major Symphony - this for the children, since Siegfried so loves the Andante.

After the rehearsal some construction work in Wahnfried, so that the musicians can have an entrance of their own (work was already started on this yesterday, but secretly, during the evening, and done as if by magic!). Incredible the effect R. has on this by no means very significant orchestra! He himself laughs when, after the rehearsal, he catches sight of a violin case belonging to one of the musicians: “That is Fr.’s magic violin - it plays wrong all by itself.” At lunch, when I express my emotion at his having orchestrated the Prelude, he says, “Yes, I was always thinking, ‘Surely she must some time notice that I am not progressing beyond those first few bars of Act III?’” Nothing but revelations at lunchtime! Also much about music, about Beethoven’s orchestration, but in him the ideas are so powerful that he triumphs over everything.

The evening begins at seven o’clock. Program: first part: Zur Weihe des Hauses Overture (Beethoven), F major Symphony. Intermission. Second part: Idyll, Andante and Presto from the A major Symphony, Egmont Overture. Long intermission, supper. Prelude to Parsifal! With each bar of each work I feel like exclaiming, “Oh, stay a while, you are so fair!” From no performance ever before have I received such an impression, never! The players, as if transformed by magic, scatter sparks of divinity all around them; it is as if all the themes are being turned to flesh and blood, they approach us like individual people, and even the auditorium looks transfigured.

At each intermission R. retires alone, but I am permitted to make sure that he is well; only after the Egmont Overture does he have a little headache, but a bit of nourishment restores him. To me it seems that these glorious works have been cleansed of all profanation, of the disparagement inflicted on them by poor, everyday performances; they appear to me like Kundry redeemed by Parsifal; and, as if the ideas themselves were conscious of this, each theme seems to greet the master by displaying all its radiance, gentle or powerful. He and Beethoven! . . . But the evening performance of the Prelude is not like the morning one, when I was all prayer and ecstasy; this time I hear the Redeemer’s call to salvation, addressed to an unheeding world, a call so sad, so sorrowful, so fervent, I see his countenance and the gaze which fell on Kundry - recognize the wilderness across which this call resounds, and the awful recognition fills me with bliss! There stands he who has called forth these wonders, and he loves me. He loves me!

Richard was by no means displeased when Councilor Kraussold, overwhelmed by his impression of Parsifal, spoke a few words and called for a cheer; in his speech he touched me with his reference to me: “she who has no desire to live for an instant without her Richard.” All took their leave silently, solemn in their exaltation. R. stays up with me and Seidl, and we talk - if talking is the right word for a series of exclamations followed by silence! But R. enlarges splendidly upon the Egmont Overture and its connection with the play: it is something quite different, he says, and yet all of it is inspired by the play; so beautiful, says R., the figure of the hero at the end, after all the preceding fears in his behalf. Otherwise it is all Klärchen!

We part when R. becomes really tired, only to find, upstairs, that we cannot part! He is pleased with the white dress he gave me, about which he was involved in a lengthy correspondence. . . .

Thursday, December 26:

R. had a very good night - this blessing to crown my happiness! Discussed the glorious performance in detail. How beautifully the clarinet played in the trio of the minuet movement of the F major! Then R. says that Fidi, to whom he had each time thrown his cap for safekeeping, had looked magnificent, resembling his father Geyer. I: “Father Geyer must surely have been your father.” R.: “I don’t believe that.” “Then why the resemblance?” R.: “My mother loved him at the time - elective affinities.”

We eat out today at Lieutenant Colonel Schaffer’s, but R. is very tired there; on his behalf I beg that he may be allowed to leave, but he stays seated and by the end of the meal looks somewhat better. As we are riding home, he says, “Yes, we must not leave Wahnfried too often.” We then look at the room which has now really become his music room; the magic still pervades it. Everything - the relationship of the orchestra to the room, the acoustics, the choice of works and order of their playing, the number of people present - it was all just right, successful in all respects; and even the present disorder is not disturbing - it reminds us of what has been!

In the evening I put on the “Marajah,” as R. calls another dress he gave me after giving all the measurements to Steckner in Leipzig and bringing into being a very rich, fantastic, and extremely becoming article of clothing. He is very pleased with it. Talked a lot about music and the concert. How everything, everything, lies in the nature of genius; it is not even the correct tempo which makes the difference, but the power which a genius has over his fellow beings. We talk away the evening in the lilac salon. R. says my dress is like the one Alexander wore after defeating Darius.

Friday, December 27:

R. had a good night, and I had the happiness of watching over his sleep and, in my pleasure at doing so, of becoming meditative and forming the only desire within my soul into a prayer. There can be no more vain striving, no worldly sorrow can disturb me, for only love now breathes within me. Merry breakfast with R.; he tells me once again how the rehearsal cured him. He had had some trouble with the Prelude to Parsifal (they had played it at twice the proper speed in Meiningen, because the conductor had not known how to indicate the rhythm of one passage, like Lachner on a previous occasion with the Tannhäuser Overture), but everything had been in order with the Overture.

Departure of Seidl, a good and industrious person. Lunch with the children; R. asks them what they liked best: Parsifal and the Beethoven Andante. R. said yesterday again that he would perhaps amuse himself by orchestrating some things afresh.

In the evening alone with Herr R. (before that R. writes to Herr Forster concerning the engagement of Seidl). Our conversation ends with a very animated description of the evils the Jews have brought on us Germans. R. says that he personally has had some very good friends among the Jews, but their emancipation and equality, granted before we Germans had come to anything, had been ruinous. He considers Germany to be finished. And this worries him, for there were signs to suggest this might happen. The Germans have been exploited and ridiculed by the Jews, and abroad they are hated. So they have become indolent, besotted, wanting to do everything as the Jews do; their faith and loyalty have been undermined. Certainly much of the blame lay with the governments. But it was all ordained by Fate. He, R., has no hope left.

Before that we talked about the influence of impressions on the senses - of music, for instance, on hearing - and, arising out of that, the remark Prof. Haeckel is supposed to have made that R.'s music has changed the hearing of the present generation. R. plays “mich sterben” from Tristan and says that many people were perplexed when they heard this for the first time. Most of them could hear no melody - but if melody were to be grasped through the intellect, then he (R.) was willing to admit that the senses might change accordingly. The body says, “I look after all the functions, but the perceptions I leave to you, the intellect.” R. also tells us of his dream, in which he saw his sister Klara passing by with her husband, and behind them a long line of people, like Banquo’s descendants; it had strangely touched him.

Saturday, December 28:

R. had a bad night; the animated discussion about the Jews was a strain on him. He praises Rubinstein’s manner and serious outlook, “but he should keep his mouth shut about the Jews, as I once said of Pohl about his wife.”

At lunch our Nibelungen copyist with his young wife, telling us dismal things about Mannheim - if only these good people would leave us in peace in our Wahnfried, not keep telling us about the outside world, which we wish so much to forget! R. tells me of a dream he had during the night from Thursday to Friday, which until now he preferred not to mention to me: he entered the town as if coming from the Fantaisie, intending to come to us, but on the way met Seidl, wearing a mourning band and accompanied by a large crowd; Seidl told him it was a funeral and attempted to hold him back; R., struggling to force his way through, exclaimed furiously, “It concerns me most of all.” Once more I see how my thoughts are turned into R.'s dreams: I prayed fervently for a blessed death, and he receives the vision! ...

In the evening we are alone and enjoy being so; Eva reads to us the saga of the trumpeter’s castle, which R. had often inquired about without being able to find it, and which means much to me because my brother once lived in the trumpeter’s castle. When the children have left, I remain alone with R., and the hours flow past in peaceful happiness until, in the hour of parting, love’s bliss floods us with its rays!

Notes

The overwhelming impression which has been dominating my thoughts for days made me incapable of reporting well, but I did not wish to break the thread of my description; hence this appendix to the various days:

Tuesday, December 24:

After my morning’s work (distributing presents) I sink down somewhat wearily into my chair, and in my usual way of restoring myself by taking up a book at random, I alight on Leopardi’s poem “To Aspasia”; his description of beauty and the effect it has on him, Leopardi, brings my thoughts straight back to R., who recently said that beauty means little to him when no soulful gaze shines through it - that is the peculiar thing about it. How different from others is R. in all things! Immersed in these reflections, I saw his cherished image within my soul and returned to my work refreshed.

R. laughs over his illness, says it is overproduction (the Emperor’s word for the troubles of German industry). The days are longer by a cock’s crow - this expression pleases R. At lunch yesterday he suddenly quoted MacMahon’s words, “Des cuirassiers, il n’y en a plus” [“There are no longer any cuirassiers”], and he goes on, “Des Allemands [Germans], il n’y en a plus!”

Wednesday, December 25:

The presents R. piled up in my room: the Marajah - the swan dress - the Roxane - the enamel costume - the Jardiniere, five in all, each more beautiful than the last. A fan of eagle’s down. A bouquet, which in the evening adorns his podium - silk stockings - shoes for each dress, all of it thought out, ordered, and obtained by him! . . . This for the appearance; for the pleasures of reality, however: the orchestral sketches of Das Liebesverbot and Die Walküre (since the first page was rather smudged, he wrote it out again), the Prelude to Parsifal! . . . Before the rehearsal, R. had difficulties: all the servants were away (Christmas Day) and could not help. Miss Murchison gone to church, having her furs carried there and back, so R., Lusch, Fidi, and Seidl had to arrange the chairs themselves! . . . When R. in great annoyance, particularly with Miss Murchison and the transport of her furs, is telling me all about it, he exclaims, “Peter, my fan!”, which then causes the greatest merriment amid all the vexation. Another characteristic episode also amuses us: when, after completing his report, he “furiously” looks to see what the servants are doing, he catches sight of Rausch bringing in a barrel of beer: “Yes, beer!” R. cries out in a rage, “Beer! As long as you’ve got your beer!” A few moments later Georg comes in with a glass of beer on a tray: “The master called for some beer?” Behind all that rage Rausch saw nothing except thirst and a desire for beer!

Before the concert begins, R. says a few words, he explains the significance of the day, and then the Overture. Before the Idyll he asks me loudly whether he should read the poem; with a movement of my head I beg him not to. Before Egmont he says, “In honor of the army, since Egmont was beheaded by soldiers.” High-spirited remarks tumble from his lips, and his eyes radiate enthusiasm. His inspiration transforms all the poor spirits assembled there as if by magic, and it is as if we were taking part in an act of creation! More than the works themselves, it is the way in which he performed them that lingers in my memory. R. tells me how blissful the members of the orchestra had been, how transfigured, when he taught them at rehearsal how to play the minuet and trio of the symphony.

He had first of all intended to play the Freischütz Overture but later abandoned the idea, and we agree that, like everything else, this was the right decision, for it would not have been in keeping with the mood.

Parsifal Prelude: Ecce homo! . . .

Thursday, December 26:

I will note down only one extra thing for today: Lt. Col. Sch[effer] tells us that, if one has not called on a citizen here, and then at some encounter wishes to clink glasses with him, he will pull his glass away. R. says: “That is perhaps not a bad characteristic of the Germans, bourgeois pride. A Jew would clink glasses with you at once, whether you have called on him or not. But everything in our country now looks so petty and ridiculous.”

Friday, December 27:

R. tells me he has looked through the Mendelssohn overtures, which I put among his Christmas presents; the Calm Sea pleases him, he was a fine musician. In the evening we discuss the trait in Hoffmann’s character which led him to seek refuge in the tavern after insipid, so-called intellectual gatherings, and when I say I can understand it, R. reads to us the passage about Ludwig Devrient in his essay Actors and Singers. R. gets indignant about the customs regulations, that is, about the irresponsible way in which Bismarck says, “I made a mistake, now we must do it differently,” yet retains the same people and still listens to their advice. He says of Beethoven’s symphonies: “There are not many such works, and if anybody put an orchestra at my disposal, I should soon be finished with it, for the works are few.” When Herr Rubinstein says the Greeks did not recognize blue, R. says: “Or, rather, where we see only a single color, they saw all sorts of nuances - they saw much more than we do.” We had some squabbling among the servants, which R. tried to smooth out himself, but in vain. When I then persuade the cook to beg his pardon, R. says to me: “Oh, she is a genius, she is like an animal, won’t listen to reason. She’s just as much a genius as Beethoven.”

Sunday, December 29:

R. had a good night, but he cannot do much talking; it is a strain on him. “Only Bayreuth and Wahnfried are fit for us” - with this paraphrase of Mephisto’s words about day and night being fit for human beings he concludes the conversation in which we decide how dead the world has become for us, and that there is nowhere we can go without changing our natures.

Yesterday evening we looked at pictures of scholars in an English book about the geologist Murchison. R. remarks: “What an advantage they have over us! They look so proud, so intelligent, if indeed also somewhat foolish, but one can see they don’t work for money.” Curious faces, curious deportment. The faces in the second volume less interesting than the first, “bad and modern,” says R.; there are now the beards he so much hates, and also some Jews among them!

R. does not go out; we spend the evening talking and looking through the Illustrirte and various other things. We begin Calderon’s El verdadero dios Pan but are soon put off by its cold manner of dismissing the deepest mysteries with displays of reason; we shall certainly never take up the autos again.

Monday, December 30:

R. had a good night, which leads to a gentle and harmonious breakfast time. He devotes the morning to a fine letter to the King, which he reads to me after lunch. In the morning he said to me: “The press! The fact that one has made this word the symbol for writing reveals the spirit behind it. It is not the setting of the type which has become the symbol, but the clumsy object one runs over it.” He reflects on an alteration in his relationship with the Society of Patrons, and on a few words to introduce Wolzogen’s work on the German language, which he is now reading. A quotation from Schopenhauer amuses him greatly: “The lion takes a taste of me.”

We invite friend Wolzogen over for the evening and spend the time in conversation; but I notice that R. is somewhat tired, I see it in his speech.

Tuesday, December 31:

Not a good night for R. . . . He writes his “introduction” and reads it to me; I then also read parts of the Wolzogen manuscript, and in the evening, while the children are casting lead and the candles on the tree are burning again, together we go through the points which struck me. R. did not go out today, either, and when we are not working, our conversation continually returns to the divine concert. We part around eleven o’clock, but we do not immediately go to sleep; each of us hears the bells, without remarking on them - everything in my soul changes into a blessing upon Richard and thanks!...