Cosima's Diaries

Friday, March 1:

R. works; he had a better night. I have some domestic difficulties to contend with, but it can all be borne cheerfully when R. is well. News from Vienna that Das Rheingold is a great success, bringing full houses; we find this difficult to explain; memories of Jauner, “head over heels,” as R. calls him, always in a fever of excitement and never knowing what is going on!

In the evening Waverley, and also looked at some new songs by R. Franz, finding little in them to enjoy. The debates in the Reichstag more and more deplorable.

Saturday, March 2:

At breakfast R. told me that he had been reflecting on our whole life together, the torment of our separations; he had no idea how we had managed to bear it. “If we don’t thank Heaven every day for our having come as far as we have, we ought to be thrashed,” he says, laughing. I tell him I know why I love God and am grateful to him. R.: “Yes, not the God who created the world, but the one who leads us out of it.”

In spite of the bad weather these last two days, R. goes out of doors. Herr Kipke in Leipzig informs us that bankruptcy proceedings have been started against poor Herr Fritzsch. Of R.’s collected writings, 1,500 copies have been sold, 700 still remain; Herr K. wants R. Schott’s Söhne to buy them for 12,000 marks, and R. suggests it to Herr Strecker. Herr Seitz junior, the painter, has turned down my request for some sketches for the Parsifal costumes, which I wanted for R.’s birthday.

Waverley in the evening.

Comparison between Alberich and Klingsor; R. tells me that he once felt every sympathy for Alberich, who represents the ugly person’s longing for beauty. In Alberich the naivete of the non-Christian world, in Klingsor the peculiar quality which Christianity brought into the world; just like the Jesuits, he does not believe in goodness, and this is his strength but at the same time his downfall, for through the ages one good man does occasionally emerge!

R. gives me an extract from the Vossische Zeitung to read regarding the Bismarck legend; it says he is supposed to have very great plans but is held back by Court officials, scheming ladies in waiting; but nobody at all knows or has seen anything of these great ideas. R. compares him with Robespierre, to the extent that the latter had people beheaded right and left, and when there was nobody left to stand in his way, he could think up nothing better than to proclaim “la vertu!”

The clumsy organization of the German Reich, the destruction of the small states, the failure, in order to help them adapt to the new organization, to look into the damage done, the petty lies, a university in Strasbourg, a memorial in the Harz, etc. All of this is regrettable, for despite everything Bismarck is still one of the most significant men in our history.

Sunday, March 3:

Arrival of our amiable friend Frau v. Schleinitz, who intends to spend a few days near us. Much chatting about a world which seems ever stranger to us.

In the evening Waverley, not much to enjoy about the Highlanders. A very good article by a Herr Löffler on the legend of Mimir and its connection with the Ring des Nibelungen. Loldi unwell.

Monday, March 4:

R. well, working cheerfully, although he wishes the “duet” were already behind him, he is looking forward to the third act. The greater part of the day devoted to our charming friend.

In the evening Parsifal, up to the arrival of the “pure fool.”

Tuesday, March 5:

Work with the children; our friend with us at lunch, as friendly and charming as ever. Really nice weather, and we go for a little walk.

In the evening the second part of Parsifal.

Wednesday, March 6:

R. and I resume the discussion we began yesterday evening; R. describes [Raphael's] Sistine Madonna as the most consummate work of art, precisely on account of its fine restraint; the very fact that it contains so few figures makes R. feel that as a work of art it is more significant than Titian's Ascension, which all but transgresses the boundaries. The Sistine Madonna stands in the same relationship to the Ascension as the C Minor Symphony (first movement) to the Eroica.

R. is very interested in his symphony, which Seidl is copying out from the orchestral parts; R. says it could have been written by a young composer between the first and second symphonies of Beethoven. But in the evening he is dismayed by the second theme. R. works, I visit our friend, and she joins us again in the evening.

The first scene of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part I, read aloud by R. He is lost in admiration for its greatness and individuality, the immediacy of history in the poet's imagination as displayed in the conference with the Archbishop of York.

Letter from Schwerin: they agree to R.'s terms for Der Ring des Nibelungen, which makes R. remark that Berlin will now be surrounded on all sides, as Plevna was; Hamburg, Schwerin, Brunswick, Leipzig, Vienna, Munich are all doing the Ring. The only curious thing is that Schwerin is not yet including Die Walküre in the contract, a point which R. is having put right by our Wolzogen.

Thursday, March 7:

R. works; lunch with our friend. All the reports she brings us of the outside world contain little to give us pleasure: 'brutality and servility,' socialist machinations (she has given me Lassalle's Une Page d'amour to read!), etc.

R. continues to read Lichtenberg, with ever-increasing enjoyment. Of certain passages he said yesterday, laughing, 'That could have been taken from my collected writings.'

In the evening conversation with our friend, then some music, the Prelude to Act III of Die Meistersinger: 'At that time I was a lonely man,' says R. 'I no longer need such consolation.' Memories of the performance of Die Meistersinger in Munich: 'The loveliest experience of my artistic life, it was virtually perfect.' Then R. plays the C-sharp Minor Prelude from Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues. An indescribable impression, it echoes within us like the quiet lament of a sphinx, or vanishing gods, or Nature before the creation of mankind!

R. says he has been composing it himself ever since his childhood, but he is not sure whether he plays it properly. The sonata, he says, brought shallowness to this original form of prelude and fugue; it was Philipp Emanuel Bach who introduced this Italianate style, and all instrumental music since then has sounded like a concert, a court concert, when compared with this revelation. And just think what Bach himself looked like, with his half-blind, anxious eyes, like Beethoven; musicians are like that, curious creatures! Before that R. played various Italian themes, from Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi, La Straniera, and Norma, and said: 'For all the poverty of invention, there is real passion and feeling there, and the right singer has only to get up and sing it for it to win all hearts. I have learned things from them which Messrs. Brahms & Co. have never learned, and they can be seen in my melodies.' After playing the C-sharp Minor Prelude, he observes, with reference to the Italian melodies whose peculiar passion we have just acknowledged, 'That is pour le monde, but this (the Prelude) is the world itself.'

Second issue of the Bayreuther Blätter, very good. Mimi has given me an essay by Renan, 'La Poésie des races celtiques', which is another curious example of the superficial, poetically sentimental way in which even the most significant Frenchmen treat scientific subjects; what most clearly shines forth is his ignorance of the German character, but it is readable and entertaining, as long as one is aware of what is incorrect in it.

Friday, March 8:

Snow squalls, R. somewhat worn out, but he works all the same. Our friend to lunch, and also again in the evening. R. sings Amfortas, but with some reluctance; he says he does not wish to do any more singing like this. Affectionate parting from our friend.

Saturday, March 9:

Snow flurries and stormy weather, also weariness and neuralgia for me. R., however, is fairly well, and very cheerful.

In the evening we return to our usual occupation; we read Waverley, agreeing that in it the great novelist, then still a beginner, spreads himself somewhat thin in many places, and he uses dialogue for things which would perhaps be better narrated. R. is in excellent spirits; he very humorously enlarges upon the present fashions for men and describes his struggles doing up buttons. As we are laughing heartily, he says to Seidl, 'Yes, Seidl, you won't always have such an entertaining companion at your side!' Nice letter from the King.

To conclude the evening R. plays the beginning of Weber's Euryanthe Overture, and we are both lost in admiration for the radiant beauty, integrity, chivalrous nobility against which the tender femininity is displayed. R. feels that a German theater should be opened with this work, rather than with Fidelio, which is much more conventional and cold. As we are going to bed, he once again thinks of Weber, and says, 'I feel so closely akin to him; maybe that is because my childhood was associated with him.'

At lunch R. says he has discovered the years of his life to be 96, he has added 1878 together, 18 and 78. He finds the Blätter very enjoyable.

Sunday, March 10:

I feel really indisposed; perhaps the break in my usual daily routine is to blame. R. is very tired and languid, but he says he has had a good inspiration and has 'cast Klingsor down.'

He goes for a walk to the Rollwenzel tavern. I have to write to friend Heckel, who appears to have been brought into a state of complete confusion by his theater management. R. again recalls the performance of Die Meistersinger and the fine behavior of the King on that occasion. In the afternoon R. and Hans Wolzogen set the whole of culture to rights, as he puts it.

In the evening we read Waverley; R. says he greatly admires novelists: this art form is as incomprehensible to him as perhaps his stories are to others.

Monday, March 11:

R. remarks that I again have my 'melancholy, eager look,' which means that I am completely restored, and indeed the sweet habit of existence has me in its grip again! My work with the children, and nothing to disturb my close life with R.

He says to me, 'My maidens come rushing in with wild gesticulations, like children whose toys have been taken away; without anger.' Yesterday evening the children were reading aloud, and R. was captivated by the sight of Fidi's fair head as he listened: 'We must be glad that we lived to hear these children's voices,' he says. He recalled his own childhood, running around the Plauen estate, for him the embodiment of all romance; then he told us about a prank at his school, the Nikolai-Schule, when during the absence of the teacher he jumped on the podium to imitate him and, in opening the desk, broke it; given away by one of his fellow pupils, he started to lie, declaring that something had been passing by, all the pupils had gone to the window, and, since there was no other place from which he could see, he had jumped on the podium; after all kinds of dire threats (suspension from school, sending him home), the teachers were astounded by his vivid imagination, and they merely told him to be less eloquent in future!

I asked him yesterday whether he still needed the ink sketches of the first act of Parsifal: 'No, for I'm such a dolt that I can't transpose; I always go by the sound and never by abstract knowledge. Perhaps that has sometimes been my salvation, keeping me from writing down something just because, according to this or that relationship, it ought to be so.'

Today there are no sounds of music in the house; he feels he must write something for the Blätter: 'I am afraid of Porges, and my pencilings have just reached a point where I can break off. After these furious affairs it will be strange for me to have to compose nothing but pleasantnesses. Maybe I won't succeed.' Regarding his article, he says he enjoys writing it, but one always has too much to say. He tells me he has read in a newspaper that musicians who have heard some of Parsifal are saying it is even more beautiful than Lohengrin: 'Certainly it should be like Lohengrin but, with the help of a few swannishnesses, even more beautiful.'

I go out and, on my return, find R. in the garden; he had been with friend Seidl, looking at his symphony, and now has some doubts whether he will publish it. At lunch he sang something from Mozart's Don Giovanni, 'Vivan le femmine, viva il buon vino,' praising it and delighting in the charm of Mozart's genius: 'He died too young, had to work in too much of a rush. He would still have had a lot to show the world.' We wandered in the garden, finding much to delight us even now, a fat blackbird on the wall.

In the evening Waverley, fine scene with the Pretender. When mention is made of the Highlanders' crawling, R. says, 'I know all about that; it is not unlike the time I crossed the border in Riga.' He tells me, 'When one is reading, all these people seem like angels and spirits, not a trace of treachery in them.' We end this day in tender intimacy, with a full sense of our happiness, oblivious of the world, immersed in each other. Nothing can disturb us as long as we are together, not even the eternally gray skies! We talk of Italy, but only for a very short visit. I tell R. that he would miss his familiar contacts with the people, his only contact with the outside world; we should never escape our feelings of remoteness; but we intend, toward the end of winter (February, March), to spend some time in the South, or at any rate we talk about it, though not very urgently.

Tuesday, March 12:

Last night I wrote an article for the Blätter. R. laughs: 'We're always doing the same thing.' He works on his, while I give the children their lessons. He comes to lunch in a very cheerful mood: 'I've now got into my stride and only hope that nothing comes to disturb me.'

In the afternoon I read some of Goethe's Zahme Xenien with great enjoyment. R. could find no proper afternoon rest and soon went out into the garden. Before supper in the evening he reads aloud to me and the Wolzogens his article, 'Modern,' which is truly unique. Before beginning, he says, 'Such things ought not to be read aloud, the sound doesn't matter, they're for the eye.' Several applications for the Society of Patrons, mainly from Riga!

In the evening Waverley; the hero reminds one in character and outlook of Wilhelm Meister. Splendid episode with Waverley's dying tenant. The melancholy of having stepped outside the world of law and order to follow one's own inclinations is very clearly revealed at the outset of the action, without being given direct expression. Another lovely day brought to an end. Oh, may the children retain their memories of this life, and may they form a shield for them against the vulgar world!

The Pretender's single cannon reminds R. of the three little cannons a manufacturer sent the revolutionaries in Dresden, and with what cheers they received these artillery weapons which were designed only to fire joyous salutes! After reading, R. plays me a melody with two different turns: 'Which is better?' 'I prefer the first one.' 'I know what I shall do,' he exclaims later as he is undressing. 'What?' 'I shall use them both.'

Wednesday, March 13:

R. had a good night and goes to his work; he tells me he is satisfied with what he has done, although, at the time he wrote it, he had not been fully satisfied. The 'Grail' returns, Amfortas is healed. I go to the theater with the children. R. goes out in the garden for a while to walk.

In the evening our friend Count Du Moulin, announcing 27 members, our little Society is growing. 'It is as impossible to write music without melody,' R. says in the course of the conversation, 'as to speak without thoughts: melody is musical thought.' Many amusing examples of the poor and threadbare melodies in Meyerbeer, strung together from bar to bar with an oom-pah-pah accompaniment. As a contrast R. sings Don Ottavio's aria and says, 'There, that is melody, there one is confronted with a real person.' R. also spoke in recent days with the greatest admiration of Haydn's Seven Last Words, saying it was deeply moving.

In the evening R. says to me: 'Everybody is astonished that I look so well; that after things and experiences that would have killed anyone else I am now writing a new work. Where do I find the strength, when after Tristan nobody thought I would ever write another note? From the fact that I am borne along on your love!'

Letter from the King's secretary, saying they intend to put the matter in order. Contract from Brunswick. Friend Heckel is now also asking for the Ring. In the evening we went through the Prelude to Parsifal; friend Seidl played it, and R. had to spend much time talking about the tempo, which S. took too slowly, or, rather, incorrectly. R. says that tempo cannot be written down, every piece has its own way of being played; of course there are pieces, he says, in which the tempo must be taken with tremendous sharpness and precision, but one must know which they are, and that must be learned from the composer. That is why he had wanted to found a school, 'where I should have vexed myself to death every day,' he added. Herr S. then plays the entrance of the knights into the Temple of the Grail, and R. is pleased when our good Count joins in to play the upper voice. 'That's what I like,' he says, 'people who can do things.'

We recall that in Tribschen I had always taken over Loge's 'tingling delight' when R. was playing 'Siegfried's Journey to the Rhine.' Talking about this violin figuration, R. speaks of the violin figuration he wrote in Paris for Tannhäuser's staggering exit, and how Gasperini called it un beau désordre.

Thursday, March 14:

R. had a bad night with terrible dreams; he wanted to play the Bach Prelude and it had to be done on chopped meat, there was none available, Fidi was suddenly missing, whisperings, forebodings, a scream, awakening. 'Then I start yodeling,' laughs R. 'Can our dear Lord find nothing better to do than torment a poor genius like me?!'

Letter to me from Herr Glasenapp, which I put in the corner cupboard along with the monographs of Ludw. Geyer and Adolph Wagner; it is again full of items of family news, very touching also on account of its final words regarding Parsifal. However, R. says, 'I had very few thoughts on the German people while I was writing it, but I understand what he means: feelings like that are always slumbering inside one.'

Around lunchtime R. plays me the introduction to the second act, Klingsor's approach and the raging of sin; it is glorious. After lunch R. returns to the difficulties of tempo. In the morning he talked about Beethoven's early sonatas and their youthful beauty. During an incredible snowstorm in the afternoon, I walk up to the theater with the children, to see about costumes. Tea with friend Gross; the contract from Munich here, a few points unacceptable. Returning home, I find R. in the salon between the first movement of his symphony and the sketches; he greets me with the words 'I have just composed a trio for the Scherzo of my symphony,' and he plays it to me. I: 'It's a veritable composing factory here!' Laughter! He inquires about the contract, insists on the repayment of my 52,000 marks from the proceeds of Parsifal, which hurts me very much, and deeply, but I let it pass, so as not to spoil R.'s splendidly cheerful spirits.

Several times today R. says, 'Now I have got into my stride.' When I tell him about my lessons, that I gave a 'lecture' on Demetrius Poliorcetes, he says, 'Greek history ends up just like the Iliad, all these people are like Homer's heroes, but they cover an enormous field.' At lunch friend Wolzogen remarks that the linen drapers Israel have supplied us with many actors. R. is still reading Lichtenberg and quotes a lot from him, the growing pains of books, for example, and the irony of Lord Chesterfield; R. hopes to have achieved this tone of mild irony in his essay, 'Modern.' Waverley in the evening.

To conclude the evening downstairs R. plays me the opening of his symphony, truly magnificent. R. says one can see in it the overpowering influence of Beethoven's works, as far as a young man of 20 can know and understand them, and, dismayed as it were by the impressions of the latter, he had attempted to link onto the 2nd Symphony. The way Mendelssohn tried to ignore it by having it disappear was very curious: 'This symphony was certainly an unpleasant surprise to him.' Talked in the evening about Victor Hugo. 'To the extent that the French can be poets, he is a poet.' R. places his Notre-Dame de Paris above Les Misérables, if only because of its love and knowledge of old Paris, which was quite unknown to the French before him; its influence extended as far as the Mousquetaires. Before our affectionate parting for the night, which cannot in fact part us, I tell R. that Glasenapp had been seeking 'Minna and Klara' in spirit at the performance of Rienzi in Riga. 'Oh, yes, I have left a lot of people behind.' 'Do you miss any of them?' 'No. The worry over losing something I have learned only since living with you.'

Friday, March 15:

R. had a better night; at breakfast he reads Tappert’s newspaper and finds all kinds of wrong things in it about Parsifal - even the “choruses” are praised! “Why can I never be left in peace to write a work in tranquillity for ourselves alone?”

He works and says he is more satisfied with what he has written in pencil than he had expected to be.

After lunch we go out together; he laughs over his “fresh and stormy gait” when with me; if he had been alone, he says, he would just have slouched along, hands behind his back. At the Wolzogens’ we find the contract from Schwerin, now in order, and so this unpleasant episode has also been resolved. On our return home R. writes to Herr v. Wolzogen senior and then does some more work in ink.

In the evening Waverley; the way the hero spends his lonely hours with his tenant reminds R. of Magdala: “Not regret at what had happened - didn’t feel that - but a feeling of having got myself into an absurd situation.” Our interest in the book grows ever greater: “You could have gone on reading it for hours and I should have listened.”

To conclude the evening he plays the melody from the Andante of his symphony, which I like very much; I tell him so. “Yes, that’s why I still believe I stole it from somewhere, though I knew very little at that time.”

At lunch he talked about Mozart, how he had earned nothing from Die Zauberflöte and how after J[oseph] II’s death no prince, no nobleman had bothered himself about Mozart, in spite of Figaro and all the other things. “Yes, our princes have always behaved splendidly! Mozart got 800 florins, and Jommelli 3,000 ducats!”

After lunch he says he is nervous about the great scene between Kundry and Parsifal; he has already done several things in this style, among others the Venus scene; Mozart only once did a scene such as the appearance of the Commendatore, and it is impossible to imagine that he would have done something similar a second time.

At supper we talk about the German language; he says Lessing did not really know it, Goethe had instinctively come much closer; Lessing wanted to set up a German language along the lines of French and English. He quotes Lichtenberg’s saying that one would be amazed how much there is in a word if only one thought about it. After Kunersdorf Frederick the Great wrote his resignation in German. Regret on my part that neither Goethe, Schiller, nor Kleist treated the Seven Years’ War in an epic manner. R. says they were already too much occupied with form and with foreign cultures. Recently R. said, “I almost wish Goethe had written nothing except Faust, so splendid is it!” (He had just quoted “From time to time I like to see the old boy,” etc.)

Saturday, March 16:

R. did not have a very good night; he had to get up once; he tells me his dream: “I was with Pope Pius IX; he received me in a friendly way, in a sort of office, but then he suddenly said, ‘You are supposed to be a very bad man, a heretic.’ I: ‘There are such things as libels.’ ‘No, no, I know. You are Russian?’ ‘Oh, then you mean Rubinstein.’ ‘Perhaps. Is his name Richard?’ ‘Oh, then you do mean me, but you know how the newspapers lie.’ ‘Yes, I do know that, and I see from your face that you are an honest man.’ ” After that they said nothing but nice things to each other, and R. thought to himself, “Oh, Lord, you’ll have to kiss his hand now.” He did so. Cordial parting, exchanging “humble servants” with the very impressive-looking Pope, who accompanied him to the door and then, from a lighted chapel into which he had withdrawn and whose door stood open, looked around at R., and nodded when R., on his way out, looked around again.

At breakfast reminiscences of our Italian journey; concerning Verona R. says, “It is a sign of vigorous life in a city when monuments such as those of the Scaligeri are set up in narrow alleys and corners.”

R. works and comes in cheerful mood to give me the Fliegenden Blätter, which he finds very entertaining. “It is a truly German periodical,” he says. Downstairs he finds a composition, Durch Kampf Sieg [“Through Battle to Victory”], which he calls Durch Dampf zum Bier [“Through Steam to Beer”]. He sings bits from it; astonishment over its amateurishness: “People have learned nothing from me,” says R.

A report on the Idyll: “I ought to be pleased when something sensible is said about it, not on account of the praise, but that there is somebody who knows how to listen to such things.” In the afternoon R. goes for a walk, far beyond the Sophienberg, as he tells me, trying to find us. I had gone to the theater with the children for a rehearsal and consequently could not go to meet him. He works but is interrupted; annoyance over this, and late in the evening I express regret for not having kept it from him: “Yes, when somebody comes and you are not there, I howl like Wana for Brange.” He had previously told us that he wanted to take the little dog with him on his walk; at first she had been frightened to go past the railings into the street, then she complained when he left, so he returned and took her with him, but when she saw Brange chasing across the fields the little creature began to whine and howl!

Read Waverley, great delight in the old Baron, R. thinks him one of the most successful of Walter Scott’s characters.

I do not know why I am so beset this evening by gloomy fears, everything startles my heart, R.’s room, everything. When R. said, “With what different feelings will our children cross this hall!” (he meant less weighty feelings), I felt a shudder go through me. Oh, happiness - too heavy a crown for a human head! How uncertainly it bears thee! But in the tender embrace which a moment ago preceded our final words to each other before parting, my fears vanish; God in His Heaven will not desert me! ... This afternoon R. spoke of a thought which sometimes strikes him and which could drive him mad: the possibility of a child’s falling seriously ill and its life being in danger.

At supper the nastiness of people toward my father: “He is living now like his own shadow,” R. says. How few people recognize that he opened the way for R.! “Well, what Liszt can do we can surely do, too.” And without Liszt, R. says, “I cannot imagine what would have happened to my things - possibly I should be moldering beside Reissiger and his Schiffbruch der Medusa.” The same for all the rest of my father’s experiences, with Joachim, Raff, etc., “for he was able to do far more for others than I could.” Contract with Brunswick signed.

Sunday, March 17:

R. had a tolerable night, though with one frightening dream about me: “Minna no longer suffices when the aim is to give me a fright - they need you for that,” he says with a laugh. He works and reaches “Verfluchtes Weib, was fragst du dies.” Friend Heckel is not able to accept the terms but would like very much to have Die Walküre. R. writes to him saying he would gladly give him personally the whole of the Sang for nothing, but he would not make the Mannheim theater a present of a single cent.

At lunch R. laughs over their imagining they could cast Die Walküre properly. “I ought to advise them to do Tristan und Isolde, for at least they’ve got a good flute player.” R. goes out and then works again until suppertime. We finish Waverley; R. thinks the court scene splendid; it is fine of Walter Scott to sacrifice the people whose exaltation does have a tinge of corruption in it.

Talking of various themes which have occurred to him, R. says, “It’s all just playing around, not the right thing at all.” Of the experience with H[eckel] R. says, “One mustn’t get involved with people without education - they don’t understand what one is saying.”

Baron Bradwardine is R.’s favorite, I love such people. The whole thing is splendid, a vanishing era, a quite different one emerging. If only we had something like that, a similar picture of the Diadochi!

I tell R. how much I enjoy reading Wolfdietrich to the girls, he agrees with me and praises Simrock’s work very highly, saying he took from the ancient language everything that was necessary and understandable. “How, after such works, can something like The Trumpeter of Säckingen become popular in such a sloppy version?” The German language, he says, is now the only one which, as J. Grimm says, can be studied physiologically, not just in order to speak it or to read the classical writers (in contrast to French, English, and Italian).

Monday, March 18:

R. had a good night; at breakfast he shows me a hymn written by Prof. Minckwitz in his honor. He works, but at lunch complains of having felt cold, and I cannot describe the concern with which I searched that dear countenance to see whether it showed any traces of indisposition! But Heaven remains merciful to me, he does not become unwell, goes walking in the garden, and continues to work in ink on his penciled sketches in the evening. Friend Wolzogen brings the cheerful news that the Emperor of Brazil has sent 15 marks through his ambassador in Berlin!

The pension the Emperor recently granted Herr J. Schmidt leads us to the little book written against him by Lassalle. Herr Gottschall is being given a title for his services to literature. R. was pleased with the portrait of Leisewitz in the Illustrierte Zeitung, he likes his pigtail: “There is something cultivated, careful about it, it reminds one slightly of the Greeks; we run around like savages, even in our dress suits!”

At supper much merriment over the collapse of our school and the curious people we should have had here for it. Hey and his 13 children - “and he always takes his nurse around with him,” says R.

Began the biography of Schopenhauer, skipping all Gwinner’s comments, but everything by Sch. himself deeply moving. When, as we say good night, I express my great delight that R. is looking so well, he says, “Yes, when I hear people talking about the jubilee of some 60-year-old, I have to laugh over the way I feel - but that is due to you and your love!”

How to express in words my happiness, such blessings?

Tuesday, March 19:

“I had a quite convenable night,” R. replies in the style of Frederick the Great (echoes of yesterday’s reading) when I ask him.

I mention the beauty and splendor of the Idyll. R. says: “I should like to write many more things like that. No one feels gratitude for the daemonic things: did anyone take notice of Hill’s Alberich?” Yesterday he said he always thought of Hill in connection with Klingsor.

Talking about the orchestra for the Idyll and his pleasure in writing things of this kind, R. moves on to quartets and says: “It is a peculiar thing about quartets: the four instruments have at times to assume a role similar to a piano, stepping in for others; the cello, having just played low notes, must start singing right up high, and that takes away its beautiful repose and evenness, it sounds in some way hurried, uncertain, and the themes don’t divide and separate. I should very much like to score the first movement of Beethoven’s E-flat Major Quartet, for instance, for an orchestra more or less the same as that for the Idyll. You would see how the themes would stand out, how something played on the horns would become clearer, whereas even in the best performance so much is lost, things are not separated out.”

Talked again about Schopenhauer, how fortunate it was that he learned Latin and Greek so late in life, but how remarkable that he then mastered them so completely.

After embracing me, R. goes off to his work singing; bells are ringing, I hear my children laughing, I enjoy then one of those moments of bliss in which the poor heart struggles for expression and finds it solely in tears!

Lunch alone with R., he eats something cold, he has done a lot of work downstairs, but he looks well and is cheerful. “You are all things,” he says to me when I show my pleasure, “you are the whole of Wahnfried, and I am your Wahnfritz.”

Curious telegram from friend Heckel... Friend Gross comes in the afternoon and unfortunately mentions the Munich contract; I beg R. just to get on with his work, and he then sends the card [not deciphered] in to me; I answer it at once with a “yes” and ask Gross to instruct his father-in-law accordingly. Splendid letter from my father about the Idyll, once again; inimitable quotation from Faust. “What an artist he is!” says R., deeply touched. And the quotation is indeed perfect in all particulars.

R. very upset by the little - the very little - he has heard about the contract. Friend Feustel arrives with extremely unpleasant accounts of the King’s position; it is being said that a trustee will have to be appointed to control his affairs, but nobody dares take the responsibility for such an act. Feustel and the mayor are to go to Munich tomorrow.

In the evening a gathering here in honor of Feustel.

R. brought me the first pencil sketches of the 2nd act.

R. told me recently that he owes the “yes” in Parsifal and Kundry’s dialogue (Act I) to the children’s conversations here - that importantly eager “yes”!

After the gathering R. comes up to me, rather worn out. Everything that disturbs his routine disagrees with him. “I am sorry for my poor maidens, whom I must now make sing,” he says as he is getting into bed. “I feel as if I were drunk,” he said at supper, “and it is only in a state of drunkenness that one can look upon this world; to look at it straight is impossible.” “Did Fidi bring you the kiss I gave him for you? He was quite astounded by its violence. ‘Silly boy,’ I told him, ‘that’s for Mama.’ ” (Fidi had taken him my “yes” to his decision.) “I shall sing nothing now except the Idyll.”

Wednesday, March 20:

R. has a slight headache from yesterday, also a little nosebleed, but he works. At lunch he is very absorbed: “I shall have to start a new page, for everything has got to be Shipka’d.”

All day long he is absorbed, but we celebrate Boni’s birthday in cheerful style. “Then and now!” I say to R. Since he lunches with me upstairs, we drink Boni’s health from the gallery upstairs, while the children clink glasses in the hall below.

In the evening Eva reads a Grimm fairy tale, “The Girl Who Had No Hands.” R. says, “That she was turned out is common enough, but that she did not want to stay in her father’s house after her hands were chopped off is a very significant feature.”

In the evening I read aloud from Schopenhauer’s biography; everything about him from his earliest youth is profound and significant. We decide to let Fidi read only Schopenhauer as his introduction to philosophy, then after him Plato and Kant.

The painters Böcklin and Seitz Junior decline to make me scenery and costume sketches for Parsifal. The architect Sitte demands to hear the music first. Oh, Germany!

Friend W. comes to see R., who tells me, “When you are not there, I have no idea what to say to people, everything seems to me either unimportant or repugnant.”

Thursday, March 21:

R. had a tolerable night, the first part at any rate very peaceful; he complains about the sunless skies, it really is always gray outside. At breakfast he recalls that friend Seidl asked him about the tempo of the Adagio in the Pastoral: “Adagio! They don’t know the difference between andante and adagio, they drag movements which ought to flow and ruin them that way. What on earth do they learn in Leipzig, Vienna, and all the other places where Seidl was?” Spanish biography, a Dutch account of R.’s life!

At lunch R. says that “Mirregni” is now in order. “Mirregni” is the song Loldi composed two years ago in honor of the dog Marke; yesterday I said to R., when he was humming to himself something from the 2nd act, that he was singing “Mirregni”; he laughed, and the name stuck. “Incidentally, I shall compose your ‘Mirregni’ once again, Loldi, particularly with that nice echo.”

Newspapers from Australia, which gives R. a chance to talk about the British: “A curious people, our present-day Vikings, and their faces - so limited, yet so assured, so resourceful and prudent.”

Talking about Parsifal’s arrival in the garden, he says: “Ah, yes, music! What could ever replace it? When he appears up there and his theme is heard - in spoken drama this pause would be impossible. The eloquent pause - that is the province of music.” Talking about Lichtenberg, he says he finds it difficult on the whole to read such isolated thoughts strung together, the time comes when he no longer really knows what he is reading; one needs a context, order, a plan, a drama. “In the end I watch them as if they were fleas, waiting for one of them to bite.” In reading them one just looks for the witticism. Even Ottilie’s diary in Elective Affinities: “I was always glad to reach the end of it.”

R. goes to see the W.’s and afterward tells me that a disgruntled man, won over again by What Is German?, has joined the Society of Patrons.

After his walk R. works, but first he answers friend Heckel’s letter, dispelling his curious delusion that he, R., had looked upon his appointment as a victory for the cause. How few friends have any real idea of what goes on in R.’s mind!

Good letter from Feustel, R. says, “Let’s wait and see.” In the evening with friend W., went through Herr Porges’s article. R. finds the beginning (religion as a link between art and public) not bad, but what follows is such that R. decides to write to the author asking him to shorten his opus. I come to realize during the reading that these people have no separate inner life of their own, no real experience of good and evil, which is why everything they say is shallow and indefinite; people who lead an inner life and are aware of it (never mind how important or petty the outward circumstances) must affirm Schopenhauer’s philosophy.

R. also has much to say about language. [A sentence about the meaning of certain German words omitted.] He laughs at the term “reformer” being applied to him: “I have reformed nothing. The expression fits Luther, but I have just cultivated seeds already there.” In our final colloquy in the evening all our outside experiences are forgotten, we speak only of ourselves or of things; today, for example, of what used to be looked upon as a necessity - that every finale “should be a sort of frenzy, a drunken hotchpotch of suffering and joy; I provided my share of that in Rienzi.” “Die Meistersinger,” I say, “is also unique in this respect - the conclusion of the first act, for example.”

Friday, March 22:

R. says the sky is like a blow on the nerves. It is and remains gray.

A batch of songs sent to him provokes R. into an indictment of lyric poetry; he does not believe the poets, he finds such things repulsive in our present world, these musical love laments, the singers with their lovelorn expressions. Goethe went back to the style of folk poetry, he says; also he wanted to get whatever he wrote about off his mind, and such things are all right when you are young. He thinks Elective Affinities the finest thing besides Faust that Goethe ever wrote; we discussed several things in it: “Oh, this Charlotte!” asking myself what happened during that time and tell myself, ‘Ah, that was in the ’50s, the ’60s.’ ”

At lunch R. is somewhat out of humor; he wanted to let me hear the beginning of the 2nd act, and friend S. was not ready in time. By coffeetime he is cheerful again, though his walk did not do him much good: vexation with the dogs even made him spit up some blood. With indescribable concern I leave him to himself, so that he can have complete rest; I give my history lesson, wondering all the time how he is, and experience the bliss of being greeted by him, completely recovered, with the words “Here comes the slender doe!”

At supper, reports that in Prussia no ministers are to be found - the result of successful intrigues or of these utterly depraved times? R. sings the finale of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata Opus [left blank] and once again praises the beauty and uniqueness of these youthful works: “One finds the beginnings of them in Mozart, but here this kind of melody forms the basis - in Mozart there are too many frills.”

The biography of Schopenhauer, regret that it was written by a man as little qualified as Dr. Gwinner: “That’s what happens to all our great men.” I express to R. my joy at seeing him well again; awareness of our happiness. “We are quite alone in this world,” says R., “not another kindred soul,” and he adds: “It is not very pretty, this world. What keeps me alive, if not your love?” And so we lay ourselves down to rest.

Saturday, March 23:

R. had a good night; in the morning he thinks of Tristan und Isolde and says: “How did I ever achieve the rapture of the 2nd act? I know, it was through seeing Schröder-Devrient as Romeo, and it isn’t so silly to have a woman in that role, for these little men, and particularly tenors, can never do those lovely wild embraces; it would have to be a brother and sister, specially trained for it by their father, as the Marchisios were trained.”

Yesterday evening he said, “I had looked forward to my Flower Maidens, now they are proving difficult, too.” He asked me what they should wear on their first appearance: “Perhaps something suggesting flower stems, and then they might decorate themselves with petals.”

Snowfall. R. is very exasperated by the weather and these skies and tells me we really must always spend a part of the winter in Italy, where we should at least have an interesting city. But in the afternoon he goes through the 2nd act of Parsifal with friend S. Oh, what does one care then about the lack of sunshine, about difficulties and cares - how unimportant and petty they all seem!

I can scarcely express my emotion with an embrace - how, then, for you, my children, in words? The whole world of sin writhes and laments, sighs and laughs in these sounds, how frail Kundry’s resistance, her initial “I will not,” how frail even her rebellion, how overpowering her laugh of desire! And Parsifal’s appearance, childlike, heroic, victorious, radiantly pure and strong as steel as he resists all their pressure! “They could not catch him, unlike Siegfried,” says R., “the fly was too large.”

R. rests for a while, but he cannot sleep. He is also pleased with his work, which is unparalleled - even compared with Erda’s awakening, Alberich’s curse! ... In the evening the Schopenhauer biography; his sister’s letters very beautiful and tender, “perhaps rather too much preoccupation with herself,” R. feels. But Schopenhauer’s letters to the business manager in Danzig quite splendid, they thoroughly delight R. with their truthfulness, their acute understanding, their wit, and their passion. ... When our friends have left, we remain a little while together, R. and I. “Let us not forget the times when such things had their beginning,” R. replies to my stammering enthusiasm.

Sunday, March 24:

Between the pages of this entry, which was incorrectly dated March 26, is a sheet of paper bearing the words: “March 26, taken in the night / Seidlitz powder / bicarbonate of soda / valerian 1 / valerian 2 / Karlsbad salt / castor oil / red wine / opium.”

R. did not have a very good night. But he is cheerful at breakfast, and we talk again about Sch.’s letters; R. is pleased that he once revealed a similar streak of firmness toward Schott: “One feels so annoyed that these people always take one to be a fool.” While undressing last night he sang something from Figaro (last act, the scene between Figaro and Susanna, when F. has recognized her beneath her mask), and he tells me he usually sings this when he is undressing, particularly the arabesque which briefly interrupts the melody: “Oh, it’s glorious! But it belongs to one particular style and time; it is the masque, and it couldn’t be done more fittingly.”

Recently we spoke of Herr v. Hülsen. “‘You are - senator’ - that’s what one should say to him,” R. observes.

R. works. Snow flurries, but sunshine between, “Loge’s flakes” fall on us gently, as in a dream, during our walk, happy feelings as we part, he to talk business with friend Wolzogen, I to read with the children, and he says, embracing me, “This cannot pass!”

Friend Wolzogen informs him that the significant Jewish voice, a rabbi from Bucovina, is a quasi-papal authority named Friedmann; R. finds the German name and the importance Israel attaches to German culture very remarkable.

Minister shortage in Berlin!

R. says, “If somebody of power and rank were now to reproach Bismarck proudly for his mistakes, what would he say in reply?”

In the evening R. feels the desire to play the graceful second theme of Beethoven’s F Major Symphony; he plays a part of the finale in the piano-duet arrangement. Continued with the Schopenhauer biography; the episode with the seamstress, it reminds one of Beethoven’s relationship with his housekeeper - a sad world that shows a genius in such a light!

During a pause in our reading R. says: “Creation is everything; fame is like an oyster shell. I find no pleasure in my things except in the moment of creation. Take the scene between Klingsor and Kundry, for instance - I have no wish to go through it again, it is all strange to me already.”

In parting I tell R. that Schopenhauer was after all not entirely right about happiness: there is such a thing. “Yes,” says R. with a smile, “but we are just a very small exception and almost unique - you can’t build universal rules on that.” He also said, “I am in the 3rd phase of my life; in the first, people from other times, like Bierey, still figured; the second was horrible, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn.”

Monday, March 25:

R. had to get up during the night; I am alarmed because he is now drinking more cognac than he used to, and I tell him so.

Dear God, everything alarms me now; recently he complained of pressure above his left eye. But he works and is cheerful at lunch. I go out while it is snowing gently; when I return home, I find him playing the end of the Pastoral in the arrangement for piano duet. After that we go through the first scene of the second act again. “What would I have to be in order to be worthy of you?” “Quiet, quiet, you see we are still having inspirations, and you are the personification of all inspirations!”

In the evening he laughs at my remark that the difference between him and the other musicians of today is that they can work without inspiration, but he cannot: “And so I am a bungler compared with them.” Friend Heckel is in fact accepting Die Walküre; Herr Lesimple is also asking for it. In the evening Schop. provides, in the episode with the seamstress, a terrible, tragicomic picture of the life of a genius! ...

Over coffee R. tells me he is now writing words for his maidens, and it reminds him of the time when he wrote words for the ending of the second act of Die Meistersinger; also in Lohengrin’s finale he thought of the music first and then worked out a text for the chorus.

Tuesday, March 26:

Spoke a great deal about Schopenhauer in the morning, his miserable life in Berlin, the magnificent twelve years of endurance. R. goes off to his “street girls”; he says, “They’re giving me a lot of trouble,” but yesterday he was pleased that he had now written over half of his work. I tell him that to me it seems like magic.

The mayor comes to see me and brings the revised contract; he says the secretary does not have the slightest doubt that the King will sign it. R. goes walking in the garden, and I go to the theater with Boni to see about costumes. R. continues working on his text and says he will have eighteen maidens, no more. No one in the audience will take any notice of the text, he says, but the singers sing differently and feel like individuals if they do not just have to sing senseless repetitions in chorus, and this adds to the general effect, as, for instance, with the song of the Valkyries.

Yesterday I asked him whether he was contented. “Infinitely,” he replied. This answer, and the emphatic way he spoke it, flooded me with a feeling of well-being, and with the memory of it I passed blissfully in the evening from waking to sleeping; he was resting quietly beside me, his “infinitely” stirred in my heart; all my sorrows seemed like departed spirits which would never return, and I enjoyed my moment of exaltation!

At supper he spoke of an earthquake in Lima, during which petroleum lamps fell over and caused an explosion. “So it’s no longer an act of God,” he says with a laugh, “but an act of civilization.” I: “But how can these people burn petroleum?” He: “You mean, in earthquakes they should at least burn oil lamps!” He has got a lot of pleasure from Lichtenberg; he quotes to us his thoughts about starving people in India and in our country [illegible word], talents for earth or heaven, stupidities in the depiction of the planetary system. Read the Schopenhauer biography, then the “By the Brook” movement of the Pastoral, played by R. as a piano duet with friend Seidl, a glorious, tender impression. “It is not at all too long,” says R.

Wednesday, March 27:

R. had a good night; he tells me at breakfast that he has half a mind to send for the Munich machinist, in order to ensure that the dragon and the fight are done properly in Munich, but then he would want the newspapers to report that he had arranged it. The dragon should come from below, he says; only its head should be seen, and then its tail when Siegfried, springing down, fights with it.

We remember with pleasure all the things we have carried out and arranged, the production of the Ring just one episode among the rest. Before that R. said to me, “We are now enjoying the fruits, not of resignation, but of desire, all the striving of our natures.” He feels the wish to buy more land for the garden; then he would no longer need to go outside his own home.

At lunch R. comes to fetch me with the words “Nenn’ ich Euch schön, dünkt Euch das recht” [“If I call you beautiful, does that seem right to you?”] he has just reached this point. At lunch he talks about the Greek lyric poets, whom he is now reading; the preface by [left blank] interests him, particularly in connection with the oracles and the significance the poets attached to rhyme, also the fact that people wrote in verse at all. “That was new to me,” he says. In the afternoon he writes to Herr v. Perfall about the dragon.

Reading the Schopenhauer biography, in the middle of it he exclaims, “A mistake, it will be A-flat major!” A break in our reading, he goes into the garden, comes back, and says he has seen the carriage with its shafts turned completely toward the east. “What does the donkey mean by this pointing toward the east? ... Maybe that after Parsifal I am to compose Die Sieger.” Schopenhauer’s letter to the Danish Academy reminds him of his letter to Bismarck (1873), and he asks me if I have it; I fetch it, we read it and are astonished that it was never answered. I found it an oppressive day; in reply to my inquiry about the condition of our friend Pusinelli I learned from his daughter that his life is despaired of! I do not tell R. this. In the evening R. thinks of friend Sulzer and resolves to send him a copy of Parsifal.

Thursday, March 28:

In the morning R. said to me: “In my bath I thought of the Japanese ministers, who have to slit open their own bellies. That can’t be easy; it would be better to let someone else do it.” Then he sang me a theme: “The Andante of your symphony,” I said, and then he suddenly asked me about Pusinelli; as so often before, he puts my thoughts into words; I have to tell him the truth. Silence.

He goes to his work; my telling him to write down the theme distracted him, he says, and now he also has the finale. He plays it. “What key shall I write my symphony in?” he asks me. “When Parsifal has been composed, I shall write nine symphonies, the ninth with choruses: ‘O Pain, thou spark of hellish darkness, knocks and blows are all thou gav’st us, and a foe besmeared with mud.’”

Yesterday, when R. asked me for the letter and I had to search for the folder in the darkness, I decided to consider it a good omen if I found it at once among all the other things; I was successful, and R. was delighted with my methodicalness. “You are splendid,” he says. I confess my foolishness to him. “No faith without superstition,” and in his kindness he indulges my superstitious nonsense about the light! Oh, how kind he is!

After his siesta he comes to me and sings “Bravo bravissimo, bravo bravissimo, Figaro” and says he is always singing this to himself nowadays. He leaves me, singing it anew. I call after him, “Your love is necessary to me.” “No, it is I who need you!”

In the evening he writes to his friend Sulzer, sending him Parsifal; he ends his letter, “There is such a thing as happiness, and we know how to appreciate it!” He says to me, “I enjoy telling Sulzer things like that.” In the Schopenhauer biography, R. tells of the Hungarian refugee Bizonfy, who confided his situation to Sch., whereupon the latter advised him to beg the Emperor for an amnesty, “which he was reluctant to do.” Our discussion of Sch.’s way of expressing himself reminds me of R., and how I share Sch.’s feeling that every conversation with another person leaves a disturbing echo! My only wish is to be left unmolested with R., living by and for ourselves.

He tells me that during his walk he was searching around for a theme for a scherzo, until he began to feel how absurd it all was, for the symphonic form was obsolete, done with. Marke made him laugh during his walk. R. had shut him up, but he escaped through the fences of three other gardens, and finally through the fence of the palace gardens, and hopped madly around R. R. took great delight in his unspoiled animal nature. Late in the evening he goes walking in the garden, and I immerse myself in my thoughts, wandering through our dear rooms, in my happiness and unworthiness! Friend Wol. tells us that the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg has sent 900 marks for the Society. Regarding the “Bravo bravissimo, Figaro” theme he says, “What could taste right after the drastic dynamic effect of that? With Mozart’s Figaro that didn’t matter.”

Friday, March 29:

R. had a somewhat troubled night. At least, troubled dreams in the early morning: that friend W. had wanted to assault me, because I had told R. that the former was attempting to force him out of the Bayreuther Blätter, and R. challenged him on it!

Conversation about Schopenhauer and the splendors of Indian wisdom, as reflected in the saying about badness and mediocrity. “Now we haven’t even got mediocrity, under which I should put Schumann, Hölderlin; so we have to promote badness to that position, like assigning the King of Württemberg to the second class of violinists.” Yesterday R. expressed his astonishment that, although he was so famous, people still tended to read what was written about him, rather than what he himself wrote; this was true even of the Jewish pamphlet. “I have been sitting at the piano for two hours,” he tells me; he is somewhat tired.

Arrival of the 6,000 marks from Schwerin; we take them to the banker Gross, who receives us with the words “My joys know no ending,” meaning the constant flow of subscriptions to the Society of Patrons. Walking in our garden, we catch sight of the first crocuses, a touching moment. As we return home through the palace gardens, he says: “It does not say much for Schopenhauer that he did not pay more attention to my Ring des Nibelungen. I know no other work in which the breaking of a will, and what a will, which delighted in the creation of a world, is shown as being accomplished through the individual strength of a proud nature without the intervention of a higher grace, as it is in Wotan. Almost obliterated by the separation from Brünnhilde, this will rears up once again, bursts into flame in the meeting with Siegfried, flickers in the dispatching of Waltraute, until, we see it entirely extinguished at the end in Valhalla.”

At supper he returns to this and says: “I am convinced Sch. would have been annoyed that I discovered this before I knew about his philosophy, I, a political refugee, the indefensibility of whose theories had been proved by his disciple Kossak on the basis of his philosophy, since my music is supposed to have no melody. But it was not very nice. It’s the way Goethe treated Kleist, whom he should have acclaimed, as Schumann acclaimed Brahms, but that only seems to happen among donkeys.” We finish the biography. R. then plays something from the Overture to Die Feen, which has just arrived in piano arrangement.

We laugh at Sch.’s mistaken beliefs, for instance, that De Sanctis was his disciple. “One should never yield to such mistaken beliefs,” R. says, “and then one can be truly happy.” I tell R. that I believe him to be the only person who has really absorbed Sch.’s philosophy into his thinking. “Most people,” he says, “want to do something with philosophy, as with religion, even redeem themselves; I can’t become saintly all at once, but at least a bit more just.”

Saturday, March 30:

Again R. had to get out of bed around four o’clock and had a disturbed night. Thinking of his overture, he says: “How this idea of fairies and fairyland introduces superficiality into one’s imagination! The glittering ballet costumes and the splendor, which can only be taken from real life, produce nothing worthwhile. What is the origin of it?” I ask whether it might not perhaps be a remnant of the houris.

Discussion about Fidi, whether he is not too sensitive. R. feels this need be no obstacle to energy of character. “Must he be a hooligan?” People who possess only energy, without this sensitivity, are sinister, inhibited characters, he says. The Greek lyric poets remind him of Nietzsche’s “extraordinary” outpourings about these very poems. Yesterday evening he could clearly recall Kügelgen, who drew a portrait of Sch. in his youth, his murder and the name of the murderer and his accomplices: “How strong these youthful impressions on one’s memory are!”

We also spoke yesterday evening about the various methods of execution. Of beheading, he said he had thought how brutal, how barbaric it was suddenly to cut off the head of a woman like Mary Stuart; here, too, the Greeks had discovered a better way with their cup of hemlock. He is satisfied with his work, yet feels oppressed; we go for a walk together, taking the two dogs, warm sunshine. R. thinks of Ajax, how he carried Patroclus from the battlefield on his sturdy shoulders. I suggest that we read the Iliad, and he says, “Yes, that is something completely different from Dante, and we have a very good translation.” On our return home he says to me, “You will be astonished to see how Parsifal’s theme appears in the third act, to describe the long journey he has made, for that is necessary.”

In the evening he writes to the King and mentions the following notice in the Musikalische Zeitung. R. says to the King that people never learn, for the same director who earns good money with R.’s operas in his theater allows such lectures to be given by Riehl in the music school. In the evening: the Die Feen Overture and the lovely Andante from his symphony. The Overture does not please R.; he finds it too dramatic and says it is just well orchestrated. But he is very happy with the Andante, which he says has character and melody; thoughts of Mendelssohn’s malice in connection with it. When we are alone, R. and I play the first half of the Idyll as a piano duet, then to rest.

R. mentions the eos krokopeplos, eos rhododaktylos [dawn’s saffron mantle, dawn’s rosy fingers] in the springtime; going off to his afternoon rest, he embraced me and said: “Lord, when I sit there in the mornings and work and know that you do not begrudge me rest and comfort, I find it hard to believe that I could be doing something else, writing an article or whatever. It needs a complete reversal of one’s nature to do it. But it is probably a good thing that one does.”

And so now this lovely day comes to an end; when I showed delight in the countryside on our walk, R. said, “You are so modest in your desires!” Ah, I wish for nothing, nothing but that he should feel well, everything, everything I find right and good if it helps him. He urged himself to walk erect, saying one is always inclined to stoop, particularly when reflecting on something.

Sunday, March 31:

R. was very languid in the morning, and I, God knows why, completely worn out; R. reproaches me for not looking after myself enough, for working too much with the children, he says I should copy him. I: “Oh, with you it is completely different, you are creating something.” He: “Well, I’m not such a pretty creation myself, that is your doing.”

How soon, however, am I completely recovered; R. fetches me for lunch and says, “Do you know how Kundry calls to Parsifal?” He sings me the phrase, so piercingly tender, with which she names him: “It is the first time his name is spoken, and thus his mother had called him! Only music can do that.” “And only your music,” I add. At lunch he tells us stories from the Oberfränkische Zeitung supplement: “How I love people who fight against the will!” Telegram from Hamburg.

R. goes for a walk; a stone breaker joins him: “You are without your wife today, yesterday she was with you.” He talks about his work. R. complains of the feelings of oppression besetting him. In the evening R. sings a theme from a Mozart quartet which he finds uniquely graceful and beautiful, but unfortunately it soon gives way to banality: “That is what we owe to Beethoven, that he did away with the bridging passages, in him everything is part of the melody.” He sings us Beethoven’s splendid songs to words by Gellert; the first in particular moves me to tears. “They were among the decisive impressions of my youth,” R. says.

He bemoans the fact that Weber always felt obliged to introduce a hunters’ chorus, an aria of expectant waiting. At lunch he sings something from Tristan, and I tell him it had been in my mind in the morning. “Things went badly for me with this,” he says, “my first Italian opera for an audience of mulattoes; my model was Romeo and Juliet - nothing but duets!” In the evening he starts chiding me again and says, “You would like to use yourself all up, so that nothing is left.” I, laughing: “Well, yes, that’s true.” “Then you’d see what a fine mess I should become.” Just before going off to bed he remembers the little dog he bought in Meudon for 3 francs; he did not know what to call it, told M. Jadin it raised no associations in his mind. “Call it 3 francs,” said his landlord.