Cosima's Diaries

Saturday, January 1:

R. did not have a good night; he feels that the tea he drank yesterday, against his usual rule, did not agree with him. But he forces himself to stay quietly in his bed, out of fear of meeting his double; I myself was frightened last night by a noise, probably a mouse.

But in the morning he is cheerful, and he continues our discussion about the introduction to the A Major Symphony, which, he maintains, musicians do not know what to do with, and which he would like to reorchestrate. “Everything is either a march or a dance, there is hardly any absolute music,” he says. “Beeth. did not have the idea I connect with this introduction, the procession I see so clearly and in such detail that I could stage it; but the thematic figures imposed themselves on him, and then he had to work them into a symphonic form.”

Added in margin: “F, C, D sharp in the 1st movement of the A Major, what a cry of sensual delight that is!” R. exclaims. “What sighing and squirming! What is a musician to do with it when it suddenly chimes in? And how one has to rehearse with orchestras in order to bring such things out!” I tell him that in Mannheim it had perhaps not been so much heard as felt. He laughs and says: “Yes, when they play with me, they do not know what is happening to them. ‘What was that?’ they ask themselves. Tausig once said to me about the Freischütz Overture, ‘I don’t know what you did to the ending, but it was incredible.’”

He feels vexed about the “stupidity” of most of the people he talks to, the way, for example, J. Rub. listened to him yesterday and then wanted to have a full mathematical exposition of his idea. And he observes that intelligence is everything, and in living together differences of character are far less an obstacle than differences of intellect.

We walk to the mayor’s house and bring New Year’s greetings to our excellent friends. At lunch our friend Feustel, a person R. always enjoys talking to. R. looks back on the past and says that in his letter he told the King of Dr. Schanzenbach’s remark about what a pleasure it was for those who had been there during the bad times to see us all again in the same Munich theater, and to see R. being given a cordial welcome by the public; bless our meal with an embrace, R. says, “Two stars encountered each other,” our eyes met and exchanged our spirits!

We go for a walk in the palace gardens and again there is some agitation because of Marke, but less severe. In the evening R. tells us feelingly about a blind starling, which a flock of starlings are looking after, feeding, taking with them on their migrations.

Rub. brings along Mozart’s concertos, we talk about this man of genius, and R. plays and sings the quartet from Don Giovanni, which he considers a consummate masterpiece. “One cannot see from his symphonies and piano works what an artist M. was; there are some splendid themes scattered among them, but the construction is loose. But here, what a host of things are gathered together in one single piece of music! A repulsive situation, if it were spoken, but turned by music into Elvira’s lament. Oh, music! In it all the world’s sufferings are transformed into a gentle lament, and all sin appears as suffering. How does one respond to this?” He plays the piece once again.

Then he reads an article to us, “Fashion and Industry,” written in connection with an incident in Vienna, the wedding of the Crown Prince and costumes ordered from Paris, demonstrations against this. R. is in agreement with the argument expressed in it, that fashion must of necessity be dominated by Paris, and says: “One might have expected something from the last war, but now we see that it was just a soldiers’ affair, nothing in it, and thus Paris must continue to dominate, and it is utterly ridiculous to talk of a German fashion. The best thing would be for women to wear military costumes.”

His final word in bed is an exclamation over the stupidity of Gladstone, who is practicing the policies of the former government, though he himself previously stood up for the Boers. “But for the boors one is doing things,” he adds. Before that he expressed a wish to see Carlyle.

Delight in each other, in our children. Once more harking back to Zurich. If only I had said to him then, “Come!” But Hans was there, Tristan! I: “We had to prove ourselves to each other.” He urges me to take my medicine and says that with every sip of my iron salts I should toast him.

Sunday, January 2:

R. slept well; the weather is cold and fine. In the morning we go for a walk in the palace gardens; as we go out, he says he always tends to the left, and he dislikes it if someone he loves sits to the right of him.

In the evening he orchestrates, but he looks worn out and fears that he might have caught cold. We start Cervantes’s Española inglessa and are astonished over its conventional charm; it reminds one of the pictures of Veronese, dating from the same time, of the later ones by Tiepolo, of the treatment of subjects from the ancient world in opera, in which everything ends in a dance.

R. points out to me how trivial all the aristocrats are, always the same, no figures of note. R. sums all this up with a single word, “Renaissance.”

Monday, January 3:

R. did not have a very good night, but he is in cheerful spirits. “In seven years we shall celebrate our silver wedding anniversary. Since then I have belonged to no other woman. Before that I did not know whether Frau von Bissing or Frau Wesendonck was the one meant for me.”

We laugh, and he recalls the three girls in blue, Boni, Loldi, Eva, how pretty they looked in the theater. Lulu as well, in a different color, in the box.

We walk in the palace gardens both morning and afternoon and delight in the “springlike winter’s day,” all the trees white; it is cold, but mild and sunny.

In the morning R. looked through his articles in the Bayreuther Bl. and was pleased with them. He still intends to add to them.

In the evening the Feustels and Wolz. and Rub., general conversation. R. reports that Phidias’s Athene is said to have been discovered. Also, on learning that Bismarck is trying to dismiss Parson Stoecker and that the Emperor is still vacillating, R. says that the same thing will happen to the Jews as happened to the “Jockeys” in Paris at the performance of Tannhäuser: the police will be brought in, not against them, but to protect them.

Departure of Lusch, who is going to Mimi in Berlin. When we are alone, R. and I, we immerse ourselves in the picture, we think of Malwida and some other resigned souls.

When he sees the children gathered around him, R. says, “To think, after 30 sterile years, of now having five children all at once around me!” He decides to send the letter off to Hans, 4 weeks after the date on it.

Tuesday, January 4:

A good night for R. and for me, lovely weather. R. reads Gobineau’s stories and finds them interesting. We go for a walk in the palace gardens around 1 o’clock.

Added in margin: “When I asked him at 1 o’clock what he had been doing, he said, ‘Putting on a shirt,’ and he complains about all the difficulties it caused him. Recently he said, ‘My hands are more absent-minded than my head.’”

A sketch of Kundry, brought along by Jouk., pleases us a lot. “Actually,” says R., “she ought to be lying there naked, like a Titian Venus.” Now this has to be replaced by finery.

A nice letter from Standhartner pleases him and starts him reminiscing about Vienna; St. is proof, he says, that one can get through to the Viennese with music, how much had he done for him when he settled in Vienna! He describes the bone structure of Standhartner’s skull as frighteningly Slavonic, yet at the same time pleasing.

In the afternoon we go for a walk in the palace gardens, delight in the fine winter weather; the sun gladdened us in the salon, “and it is always the setting sun,” says R., “which gives us this light, like the smile of a god”; the transfigured picture of Beeth. delights him. The ice, the evening glow, the crescent moon appearing; now and again poor women, to whom he gives something and who bless him. We also stroll in the garden, and there it is begging children who besiege us, and the evening star which delights us.

When I tell R. that, bad as my sight is, at table I clearly see his countenance as something impregnable, reserved, as it were, protecting and shutting off his inner being from outside attack, and his gaze as that which gives, bestows, reveals his inner thoughts, he tells me, “It is your will which allows you to see all that.”

And in deep, harmonious peace we part; the glow of the setting sun, the moon’s chaste gold, the gleaming purity of the evening star have left their blessings deep in my heart. All, all that is, speaks of the land of nowhere, the never-never land for which one’s heart is always yearning!

In the evening we intend to finish Cervantes’s story, but we find it quite impossible. Instead R. reads us “Councilor Tusmann” from Die Serapionsbrüder; we enjoy it, and R. says, “He is an original talent. I am glad we Germans have someone like that to show, and everything by Hoffmann always contains an idea.”

Wednesday, January 5:

R. did not have a good night, and he feels oppressed. In the morning he reads Gobineau’s stories with much enjoyment; he particularly likes “The Persian Magician,” and he feels that of all modern languages French is the best suited for conveying an impression of Oriental courtesy.

At 12, when he comes downstairs to begin work, he finds some business letters; these delay him and vex him. Believing him to be working, I pay some calls with Boni; as we return, I see him in the avenue, coming toward us. He had been watching the other children skating, but he is not well. And a walk we take in the palace gardens does nothing to restore him, for it is very windy. “Devil take ozone!” he exclaims in the middle of it.

At lunch our conversation turns to violent emotions, and whether there can be love without jealousy. R. says, “It is a terrible thought, and one is deprived of the basis of everything, of one’s whole roots, if one assumes that somebody else can be the sharer of one’s joy, that just shows what a risky thing the love bond is.”

Yesterday R. said that he still intended to write about his ideas on property for the Blätter; how sacred this idea has always been can be seen in the fact that every robber, every conqueror, starts with the assumption of its sacredness. How would it be if nobody possessed anything?

In the evening he works a little on the orchestration of Parsifal and says how curious it was that, while orchestrating “In heilig ernster Nacht nahten sich des Heilands holde Boten,” he happened to open the book at that passage and saw that in his sketch he had left out the word dereinst; this he immediately put back in, for rhythmically it was very welcome to him. Words like Heiland should never be extended, he says.

In the evening R. reads “Die Brautschau” to us, up to the end, that is to say, not right to the end, for R. feels it is amateurish and loses itself in insipidities. R. considers the form of the Mozart concertos extraordinarily clumsy, with some nice ideas scattered throughout.

Thursday, January 6:

R. procured a better night for himself by taking medicine. He jokingly calls me the Napoleon of sleepers. Napoleon is now his main word for everything.

While still in bed, he says, “If you look after me well, clothe me well, feed me well, then I shall still compose Die Sieger.” “My difficulty there is the locality and the speech. Christianity is all noble simplicity, but in Buddhism there is so much education, and education is very inartistic.” We talk of the fact that in both, Parsifal and Sieger, more or less the same theme, the redemption of a woman, is treated. “It is impossible to judge what an effect the 3rd act of P. will have if it is well done.” Thus is why for Kundry he wants some other singer than Materna, whose face does not appeal to him, for she should be capable of deep and noble expressions.

“I wonder if some formula could be found,” he continues after a while, “for baptizing some such poor creature as Levi, I believe I could discover it.” And he expands on his idea concerning faith, love, and hope, as described in his most recent article. “One cannot speak too harshly against all the things that make up our modern culture. When I think that Bismarck has applied for the dismissal of Parson Stoecker, and when I think of our future with the Crown Prince, and particularly her! When I recall that women like her simply refuse to discuss certain subjects, such as vivisection!”

I say that the women cannot be held responsible for everything, but he exclaims: “Oh, yes, they can. The men are just wretched soldiers, the women are the only ones to whom one can turn in idealistic matters; and if all one finds there is leather, it really is appalling.” When, referring to religious statements, I say, “I hope for eternal peace after our death,” he replies, “Those are all secrets; we should not run around as we do with our five senses if we knew the answers.”

He orchestrates, asks me whether I like flageolets, and says I cannot know what it is like when a passage has to be reorchestrated three times. We go for a walk in the palace gardens, where Fidi is skating.

At lunch he comes back to Hoffmann’s story and says it is utterly unworthy of being read aloud to us; he is downright ashamed of having suggested it. Whereas he highly praises Gobineau’s stories.

Countess La Tour’s action in sending us the Count’s picture starts a discussion over coffee about relationships of this kind. When I say that the Countess would be very shocked if one were to assume anything beyond friendship, R. says: “But what is that, spending their evenings in intellectual conversations together? In such cases it always turns out that she is a goose and he a silly fool, for if one assumes that such contacts are not at the same time, how shall I put it, physically beneficial, then all this homage to Plato is ridiculous.”

He works in the afternoon, three bars cause him trouble, and he cites to me Helm’s article about the quartets, the freedom of the voice leading in the Opus 133 Fugue. He says that with him it was more or less the same, he felt this urge, and he promises to show me a subsidiary voice in Gurnemanz’s narration.

The question of costumes and decorations is discussed in the evening.

Added on a later page but referred back to this point: “R. shows us the article on the philosopher Hartmann in Spamer’s encyclopedia, and we are much amused by the expression ‘his cowardly personal renunciation.’ R. thinks these pieces are now all written by Jews.”

Friday, January 7:

R. had quite a tolerable night and works on his score in the morning. In the afternoon we go for a walk in the palace gardens, where R. finds the windless, mild cold very pleasant.

At lunch we had friend Heckel, who has come here for a conference. Nibelung reminiscences in plenty. R. works; it is still the three bars, “es neigten in heilig ernster Nacht,” which occupy him. He feels tired.

In the evening much about Count Gobineau, whose Ottar Jarl I find very gripping, and it leads to a discussion of old Nordic customs. A letter from Lusch delights us with its naturalness, and its discretion. R. expressed his antipathy for the English again today.

Saturday, January 8:

R. had a tolerable night. In the morning we talk once more about Lusch’s letter. “Yes,” he says, “if she imagines she will ever again find someone like you!” And he observes that in the social world there is in fact a great deal of vulgarity to be found, even among the women, while the men can talk only about horses. “A man like Schleinitz is extraordinarily rare, heartless though he may be.”

R. is not entirely pleased by our friends’ coming here for a conference; he says he feels no great eagerness to stage the work, though it gave him much joy to write it.

At 12 R. calls me and shows me how he has placed his nice slippers beneath his big chair; things like that give him pleasure, he says, when he enters the room. When I tell him I can understand that, he says, “Yes, but your way of making your room pleasant is just to put up nasty pictures of me.”

Then he tells me that he feels like writing his article about the present Jewish problem; I had suggested it to him, and he would like to do it now, to ask, “What does a Jew find when he comes to us?”

R. works after we have been for a stroll in the palace gardens.

In the evening Herr Schön, Pohl, and Heckel; R. annoyed, first because, not wishing to retain his informal clothes, he feels uncomfortable, and second because he has no desire to talk about these things. He finds the good people all too unsatisfactory and insignificant, and the first moment of meeting is tart on his side and rather off-putting. But he soon recovers, makes jokes with and about Pohl, and when Rub. plays my father’s arrangement of the Hummel septet, R. is in high spirits and finds much amusement in this old-fashioned, worthy piece, with all its padding. Afterward he plays with Rub. the Overture to Rienzi.

When our friends have left, R. and I remain alone together; it is as if we discover each other anew, and how beautiful, how splendid the discovery then turns out to be! R. wanted to drink Hans’s health; I asked him not to.

Sunday, January 9:

R. did not have a good night, but he cheers up during our breakfast together, and we start a long discussion about patience. I have often spoken in praise of it; R. says I am right and praises it as the true form of courage. He quotes as examples Frederick the Great, Marius, and Morosini, and the Christians who refused military service and submitted to torture.

“Spring is here,” he cries when he hears me opening my egg, and declares that it sounded like a woodpecker tapping on a tree. He also appears to be cheerful around lunchtime, when he shows me his dress suit and says he wants to look formal for our guests.

But when the meal arrives he looks ill, is out of humor, and so unwell that he leaves the table. He soon returns and gradually regains his spirits. The conclusions of the conference are discussed, as well as the present relationship of the Society of Patrons to the performances, seats for which are now after all to be put on sale.

We then go for a walk in the palace gardens, since R. is feeling better. In the evening, before our friends arrive, he comes to sit beside me with a serious face: “My reverence for you grows and grows,” he says, “but everything else leaves me increasingly indifferent.”

Evening comes, and with it our guests, and R. is told what was decided at the conference. He is satisfied, and he tells me that a social gathering of this kind, at which matters of common interest are discussed, is by no means the worst. He is cheerful, exceedingly friendly and kind toward everybody.

When we are alone together, he reads me several things from Count Gobineau’s stories, after I have told him what I have written to Stein about patience and about happiness, which I regard as a treasure to be unearthed, hence the verb “to treasure”; such happiness is perhaps all the harder to snatch for oneself when an apparent fulfillment, our festivals, has already been achieved. R. observes that feelings of this kind would not be easily understood.

Monday, January 10:

Our morning conversation concerns that disinherited part of humanity to which no ray of religion, let alone of art, can penetrate. We feel the irony of talking about Christian renunciation when all around us are hunger, need, oppression, apathy.

Molle arrives from Bremen, a good and handsome creature. Also a letter from Herr Neumann enclosing very large announcements. R. tells the children he would become so rich that he would have his trousers made with holes in them, so that money would spill out in all directions!

We go to Jouk.’s studio to look at the Magic Garden, which is still not quite right. R. feels rather run down; but over coffee we get immersed in a long discussion following what I have to say about Ottar Jarl. When I declare that Gobineau has vindicated medieval poetry’s claim to be regarded as original, R. disputes this view and says that it drew very largely on the Orient, and only the confused ancient heathen traditions were genuine; Wolfram’s Parzival is not genuine, and that is why it does not make much impression on one in spite of some very lovely features. “The first original work is my Ring des Nibelungen. The second part of the Nibelungenlied is original, too; the first part is a compilation.”

But he remarks on the Count’s sympathy for the heroes of the 11th century, who because of the vigor and independence of their characters were able, following their deeds of plunder and conquest, to bow down before holiness and become saints themselves. He continues, “It would be nice if we could also recognize some special qualities in the German character, some peculiar enlightenment, capable of absorbing quietly all that is foreign to it and reproducing it!”

We go for a walk in the palace gardens, watch the children skating, Fidi the Quaker, on account of his round hat. In the evening R. writes to Herr Neumann, complaining about all the business matters he now has to attend to.

Afterward our friends Schön, Heckel, Feustel. R. shows considerable composure, though he loses it when friend Feustel talks rather airily about the present prosperity and says that the farmers are pleased when they see some Jew who has come to buy their cattle. R. grows angry, regrets it, and says to me afterward that nothing upsets him more than having to listen to a string of platitudes and being provoked into making a reply which in any case will not be understood.

There is an amusing moment when Feustel, after observing that it is not only the Jews who are to blame for swindling the people, asks earnestly, “Who has the control over my purse?” “I,” says R.

Developments in France still continue to interest R. It is said that anti-Semitic demonstrations are assuming ever-increasing proportions!

Tuesday, January 11:

“Well, what does that have to do with me?” I hear R. say during the night. I: “What?” “Corfu’s neutrality, of which I have just been dreaming.” He slept quite well, and at 12 o’clock settles down to his work, after writing to inquire what he owes for Molle.

At breakfast and also at lunch we talked about friend Feustel’s optimistic sophisms and also about Empress Augusta, who appears to have directed some malicious remarks at Lusch. R. says, “These creatures are such utter nobodies, they cannot even make people happy, for when they bring someone into their entourage, they then find it a bother, and all that’s left to them is to make malicious remarks.”

Over coffee we again talk about Gobineau’s stories, which R. finds very absorbing. In the palace gardens he tells me about the Chileans, who are now outside Lima.

In the evening R. jokes about a present I have given to Fidel, saying he wants to see the gold pencil, too, he is hoping to become Fidi’s heir. He expresses his happy feelings of certitude that nothing can happen to our children, and so foolish am I that, instead of being pleased, I am gripped by a kind of fear; I betray this only through a movement and an exclamation, but how unjust of me, how lacking in self-discipline, not simply to be pleased when he expresses pleasure!

I read “L’Illustre Magicien” aloud, and R. is much delighted by it even on hearing it a second time, particularly the scene in which the magician teaches Kassem wisdom and in which only the effect on Kassem is shown, then the first scene between Kassem and his wife and the return of the sister.

R. has taken a little notebook up to his dressing room, since, as he tells me, musical ideas always come to him while he is dressing. Letters from Lusch to her sisters entertain and delight us.

Wednesday, January 12:

R. had a rather restless night, but he works, and his face wears its merry and sparkling expression at lunch, when he drinks Wilhelmj’s new wine, “Rauenthaler Richard Wagner,” with enjoyment. We drink our health. R. says, “I drank silently to the children’s health,” and I feel as if, for my sake, he has been making up for yesterday’s rashness. Still delight in Gobineau.

A walk in the palace gardens at 4 o’clock, the air very pleasant. Then R. settles down to the joyful exertions of work, and comes to fetch me in the evening as at midday. At lunch he was even more inwardly absorbed by his work. In the evening friends Jouk., Rub., Humperdinck.

R. talks about Mozart, “How lonely such a man is!” and how after him there followed such commonplace works as Dorfbarbier, Donau-Weibchen, etc. “Schools, alas!” he cries ironically. “Now, after 50 years, they are looking at Lohengrin, to see more or less how it was done!” Recently, when somebody said that Jesus was a Jew, he replied that this was more or less like saying Mozart was a credit to the people of Salzburg.

But today was a really nice monastic day, tranquil and industrious, and with those words of his to me which I often do not dare to write down, like starshine in the evening, like dew in the morning. And the constant feeling of communion! Today I wrote to Herr Marsillach about his book, and almost everything I said in my letter R. brings up today as table conversation.

In the evening he says, “I am glad that I shall not need to go to America, Ich-Neumann will be going.” “Your alter ego,” I cry, and we laugh heartily over R.’s notion. A pamphlet against the Jews by Prof. Dühring is truly dreadful on account of its style.

Thursday, January 13:

Good night, and all day the same nice monastic atmosphere. Our friend Jouk.’s birthday gives R. an opportunity to display all his usual kindness.

At 4 o’clock our old comrade-in-arms Karl Brandt! Against Feustel’s advice R. has turned to him and invited him here to discuss the staging of Parsifal. Many memories, but above all much good sense, all conceivable technical questions; the music for the walk to the Temple listened to in order to assess the time needed for the transformation scene.

At the end of it R., turning to Joukowsky, quotes humorously from the Fl. Platter: “An officer cries out to a volunteer, ‘Listen, you are not at college now.’” We are not in the studio now, he says, the time for dilettantism is past. On the one hand R. regrets, but on the other he is glad, that things are now beginning in earnest. And that means Brandt. It is truly curious to hear the spear now being discussed, how it is to be held up with wires, whereas up till now it was only his soul that mattered.

R. is still taking great pleasure in Gobineau; he exclaims, “What a shame that I find the only original writer so late in life!”

Friday, January 14:

A good night, good work, and much Brandt: “This cold Brandt,” R. exclaims. Our old friend has been to the theater and pleases us with his delight at the way everything has been preserved. Maquettes are brought down so that he can show friend Jouk. what he wants.

In the afternoon, while the expert and the amateur are deliberating, R. and I go for a walk, watch Fidi tracing curves for the first time, delight in the two dogs, who look very funny in all the snow and come bounding toward us over the bridge. The cold is severe. R. takes delight in the full moon, standing very proudly in the sky “as if Gottlieb had put it there.” He tells us that during a theatrical performance a voice was suddenly heard saying, “Gottlieb, pull out the moon.” I, with a shawl over my head, am Dürer’s Saint Hubert. At lunch he toasted me as “our dear lady of Wahnfried”!

In the evening he has to write a letter to Herr Batz, who is again behaving in a most presumptuous way in connection with the Tristan production in Leipzig. Feustel admires the precision of his letter, but R. complains about having to cope with all these Neumann and Batz escapades.

In the evening many, many memories with friend Brandt of Nibelungen tribulations; R. also discusses various things with him, such as the lighting for the dove at the end, and laughingly says over and over again that it is noses to the grindstone when Brandt appears. And when earth but our love. And my whole day is a prayer that I may be worthy of it.

Added in margin: “In the evening R. talks in grateful praise of the King.”

When I talk to R. about Imitatio Christi and say I should be interested to know if it would appeal to him, he replies, “I am in the clutches of the Devil of art!” In the morning a letter from Lusch, received the previous evening and containing comments on the nature of worldly society, produced the remark that she will certainly never find a husband there. It makes us laugh heartily when, after I mention a friend of Stein’s (Delbrück) in a completely different connection, R. exclaims, “Delbrück, wouldn’t he do?”

Saturday, January 15:

R. had a good night and does some work; but at lunch he is feeling some discomfort. It is very cold, but all the same we go for a walk in the palace gardens, talking a lot about Brandt, whose visit has pleased him very much.

In the evening I read Gobineau’s story “Gamber-Ali” aloud. Friend Feustel has sent me the minutes of the committee meeting, and I am pleased to see an alteration in the final paragraph which will enable R.’s wish to be fulfilled, namely, that the Bülow fund should go to his children. Lengthy examination of the map of Asia with R. after the story reading.

Sunday, January 16:

Reflections on history and the development of mankind’s predatory activities lead me to ask in the morning whether these have not brought about art. “Certainly,” says R., “and that is why it is an evasion and a dismal substitute; it becomes something worthwhile only when it is religion, but not when robber chiefs set themselves up as judges over the art of their dagger thrusts. Keep that in mind,” he adds jokingly as he embraces me on our morning’s parting.

He works and is pleased that the 30 pages of his score already look imposing. But before he goes to work, immediately after our parting, he comes to me wearing my old fox fur, which he has had covered in black velvet in a single day as a surprise for me. He is happy to have brought it off and reproaches me for denying everything, the cold and all the rest, as exuberant again now as ever before!

He is still enjoying Gobineau’s stories. We go for a walk in the palace gardens, I in my new furs, this time just with Molly, since Marke has a glass splinter in his paw; she is very obedient. Before that, a letter from “an enchanted prince,” as he calls himself, containing much talk about the purely human factor, produces from R. the remark: “At the time I was corresponding with Uhlig I should have been in the right frame of mind for it and should have taken a look at this man. In those days I wanted at all costs to discover the purely human factor in everything, in Karl R[itter], Uhlig, everyone.”

He works in the evening as well and summons me to his side to drink some bock beer which he has had sent along and which he likes very much. I found him conversing with friend Jouk. about the minnesingers, in particular the poem by Emperor Heinrich, which I am asked to read aloud. Its delicate phrases please R. greatly, and he goes into raptures about that period, saying how cultivated it was, and how diversified.

We spend the evening in conversation. Among other things, R. says, “If the Russians took Constantinople, they would still stay up in St. Petersburg and rule the new territory from there.” When R. and I are alone, he goes to the piano and plays a passionately imploring melody from Bellini’s La Straniera, then another, in character not dissimilar, from I Capuleti ed i Montecchi, remarking on its long-drawn-out character, something one also finds in Spontini, whereas in Mozart almost everything is unfortunately shortly phrased. He then goes on to Rienzi and says he can understand my father’s and my delight in the work, since there is this streak of aristocracy in it.

As we part to change our clothes, we have the most blissful feeling of inseparability; he asks me to look after his health, “for I wish to live disgracefully long, fifteen years more than the allotted span, in order to make up for the time we have lost.”

Added at bottom of page: “An engineer in Helsingfors writes very nicely to Wolz. about his Wagnerianism and the flatter. He regrets J. R[ubinstein]’s article about Schumann, and R. is inclined to agree with me when I observe that this article, while remaining just as sharp, should have been more comprehensive and more detailed, Schu. as composer of oratorios, as symphonist, as opera composer, etc.”

Monday, January 17:

R. dreamed thoughts which had been much occupying my mind, and did not have a very good night. But he works. At lunch he tells us about the war against the Turkomans, another of the Count’s stories. My report of a visit to the Berrs’ and the growing insanity of the husband produces from R. the remark that everyone in the grip of passion is close to insanity, that is to say, clinging to one fixed idea and ignoring everything else. We talk about Othello and he recalls what “was not very long ago.”

In one’s memory, he says, names disappear first of all, since they are a convention which has nothing to do with the person, whom one can still see quite clearly. We read the Crown Prince’s words to Councilor Magnus, and when the question is raised what he can do now, R. says, “Keep his mouth shut.” When I observe that this aggressive attitude probably stems from fear, R. says, “Yes, and from the idea of being liberal, moving with the times, ideas which the Crown Princess brought with her.” He would never forget her “Oh, no, Fritz,” in connection with Bayreuth, he said recently.

In the morning a remark by an acquaintance brought into my mind the question of the confirmation of the two girls; I talk to R. about it, and as a result he decides to send the letter off to Herr Frege. When I come down to supper, after we parted very amicably on returning from our walk, I find him in a very agitated state of mind; bills, the eternal trouble with the new water supply, perhaps the dispatch of the letter as well, in short, he is in a very bad humor, and when some of our friends arrive, their presence does not help to dispel his gloom.

He tries Mozart’s E-flat Major Symphony with Humperdinck and talks of the difficulty of doing the Adagio properly, showing us how it is usually played at concerts. But then Rub. plays us the first part of the Opus 106 Sonata, and our delight is boundless! In fact, we cannot get over the impression it makes on us, and when we are alone, R. and I, so many words of liberation and happiness escape our lips that I shall have difficulty in remembering them. R.: “It is like being taken into the workshop of the Will, one sees everything moving and stirring as if in the bowels of the earth.” “Anyone who could translate this into words would have the key to the enigma of the world.” “Cries of passion to which the workshop opens its doors.” “Not even Shakespeare can be compared to it, for what he has created is too closely connected with the world’s misery.” “In the symphony Beeth. lets others play, here he himself is playing.” “And all that in the form of a sonata, what a sonata!”

We end this enchanted evening by recalling that we have now been living together for 17 years.

Tuesday, January 18:

R. is rather unwell, has a buzzing in his ears. When we part after breakfast, he embraces me: “Blessings on you, pardon everything as I beg your pardon for still being here, for by rights I should long ago have joined the hammerklavier.” He comes downstairs later, supplies a dedication to Mimi in the biography, looks at clothing fabrics, since he wants new paletots for his children; I feel that the old ones are still all right, but he wishes it.

Over coffee we talk a lot about Semper; only recently he recalled with pleasure that he bought a copy of the text of Tannhäuser for himself. He remembers that Semper worked out his book on style during late sessions in the tavern with Herwegh, and that Herwegh was a good listener. When mention is made of his great admiration for the French, R. says, “They possess the ideality of our reality.” At lunch he complained of his catarrh and said he would like to be given two slaps on the face at once, so that the cold would fall out through his nose!

Added in margin: “At lunch R. again proclaims his intention of living to be 94.”

A walk in the palace gardens, delight in shs. Quaker (Fidi), who, R. thinks, looks exactly like my father in his hat and long paletot. “All of the children must turn out like your father, I shall just keep Eva!” He works before supper, and after it Fidi does some magic tricks for us. Then we read Gobineau’s story, and R. is pleased with this new acquaintance, so rare a mind; he praises the Cervantes-like flavor of his stories.

In the evening, stretched out in his big chair in his dressing room, he says, “And now I am supposed to be looking forward to Parsifal, to coaching Jäger.” But when, to distract him from all solemn thoughts, I admire his robe, which is pink, he says, “Yes, this is what makes me feel good, something Feustel would find it completely impossible to understand.” Yesterday, when we were passing through his workroom, he caught sight of my picture over the piano, but he talks about the other pastel drawing by Lenbach: “It looks at me in a ghostlike way, reminding me of all that is solemn and good.”

Wednesday, January 19:

R. did not have an entirely good night, and he does not feel well. He begs my pardon for complaining, and I say that it is the great drawback of love that it cannot overcome all the trials of life. “No, but it makes us forget them,” R. replies, and, truly, in the course of our conversation together they are soon forgotten. But then, as always, comes day!

Many thoughts of Andalusia in the past few days, and it is constantly being declared that we shall spend next winter in Seville. R. speaks glowingly of the good Italy did him, particularly Siena.

I tell R. about old Frau von Aufsess’s 14-year-old dog, which the police have taken away from her on account of the present precautionary measures. R. says: “It’s like everything else, they do not bother their heads about food being adulterated, animals being tortured, but someone suddenly hatches the abstract idea that at a certain age animals turn into corpses. I don’t know what I should do if somebody came into my house and took away a dog.”

Today R. goes for a walk in the palace gardens by himself, since I am not quite well. Friend Levi arrives toward evening, and music is played, that is to say, R. sings some ballades by Loewe, in order to show, as he puts it, “what has been lost in us Germans.” We always take great delight in these productions, in which, as R. says, the poetry makes more impact than the music.

Then he announces to Herr Levi, to his astonishment, that he is to conduct Parsifal: “Beforehand, we shall go through a ceremonial act with you. I hope I shall succeed in finding a formula which will make you feel completely one of us.” The veiled expression on our friend’s face induces R. to change the subject, but when we are alone, we discuss this question further. I tell R. that what seems to me to be the difficulty here is that the community into which the Israelite would be accepted has itself abandoned Christ, though it might write about him, whereas previously blood was shed and everything sacrificed in his behalf. R. says he himself has certainly remained true to him, and in his last essay he more or less outlined what the formula would be. “The trouble is,” he exclaims, “that all great personalities reveal themselves to us in time and space, and are thus subject to change.”

When we have our first parting, he exclaims jokingly, “What an accursed subject you have brought up here!” and when we come together again, he raises it once more, and we agree that this alien race can never be wholly absorbed into our own. R. tells me, and I write it down here, for he has repeatedly said it to me, with very great earnestness and not a trace of mockery, that when our friend modestly approached him and kissed his hand, R. embraced him with great inner warmth, and from what emanated between them, he came to feel with extraordinary precision what a difference of race and separateness really mean. And thus the good Jew always suffers a melancholy lot in our midst.

Thursday, January 20:

R. slept well. He spoke softly as he was falling asleep, and I heard, among other things, the words “the best woman in the world.” When I tell him this, he says, “That is how it is, when one’s sleep is peaceful, one knows nothing about it.” But at lunch he does not feel well, agitated, and his digestion out of order.

We talk about Saint Augustine, whom friend Levi carries around with him, into whom I glanced and who does not please me on account of the God Creator he is always praising. R. criticizes the conductor’s gloominess and says: “I should think that being taken up in such a friendly way by people like us would be enough to make anyone cheerful; or are you superstitious, having trouble with your souls?” He then speaks of Rub., how he is always preoccupied with himself, and in spite of his good qualities can never throw this off. He compares him with Levi, who is much more fortunate, since he has his own field of activity. He advises “a carefree expansiveness.”

R. calls me Flower Mother, since at present I am frequently wearing asters, but he chides me for dressing à la vieille, is unwilling to admit that I am old! He goes for a walk with Jouk. and Levi, then he works, after complaining humorously that the story “Les Amants de Kandahar” keeps him so absorbed that he always comes to his score too late. Despite the corrupt state of the Orient as described in it, he says, Europe nevertheless seems to him a land of barbarians, with all its epaulets, etc.

France, where the new elections have turned out in Ferry’s favor, pleases him, as also Gladstone’s reply in connection with the Boers. He is still hoping that, with the collapse of external power, the right man will emerge in England’s interior.

In the evening we ask Rub. to play us the 1st movement of 106 again, and it gives us the same ravishing delight. Whether at a certain point it should be a sharp or a natural, R. says, he finds it impossible to decide, whereas with the famous passage in the Eroica he simply tells himself that to him it doesn’t sound right, and if anybody wished to do him a favor, he would play it differently.

Added in margin: “‘Marry my wife, then you’ll be cheerful,’ says R. to the gloomy-looking conductor.”

He talks of the new version he made of the ballade in Der fliegende Holländer, which he has unfortunately lost. The same thing happened with the “ich sank in süssen Schlaf” passage in Lohengrin, he says: he had it quite wonderfully but never found it again; as it now stands, it is an approximation.

When we are alone and I meet him again after our first parting, I find him much irritated by his two fingers (thumbs), which are painful and which he keeps stubbing. But I succeed in coaxing him out of these feelings of annoyance, and I have the joy of being able to tell him that, since for me he so completely is and represents the divine principle, I am constantly becoming more and more religious and able to follow the mystics with ever-increasing understanding, learning thereby to despise the world and accept the blessings of peace.

Perhaps this is why my greatest sacrifice is keeping in touch, for his sake, with a world in which there is no choice but to suffer. And, turning to his nature and the way in which it finds expression, I tell him that he is the only person I know whose speech and language are what color is to the leaf and scent to the flower, something involuntary, devoid of ulterior motive and in consequence very often made to look inconsiderate; when he then notices that he has offended someone with an involuntary remark, he tries with every means to put it right, even to the point of denying his own feelings.

Many people without understanding have taken him to be insincere because of this! Nothing any longer disturbs me, I see it all. I follow each and every utterance like a river whose pure source and outflow in the infinite deep are known to me.

Friday, January 21:

R. slept well, and he goes to his work. But when I go down to lunch I find him in poor spirits. His finger is hurting him, and a letter from Herr Batz annoys him and makes him regret having spoken even a single word; he says that by doing so one places oneself on the same level as these people.

Our conversation at lunch leads us to various women, and R. sums up his repugnance for them thus: “Very gifted, but they have no souls, but the same can be said of some men. No person can mean anything to me, and that is why I have created a family for myself. Only those who fit in with the family mean anything to me.” Over coffee he reads to us with much amusement two anecdotes from an anti-Jewish newspaper, one about Rossi, the other about the parson Delitzsch, whom he once knew. “The fact that D. was a Jew explains many things to me as well; he was an unpleasant character,” he says.

Somewhat boldly, I tell him that when I join him, however poor in spirits, after we spend a little while together he is again in a good and cheerful mood. “We should come together to die,” he replies earnestly. We go out, the dogs almost knock R. over in their joy, and in this devotion of animals to him I see one of the signs of R.’s wonderful connection with Nature. Animals like me very much, too, but it seems to me that they greet him as if no division had ever taken place. When we return home, R. feels Marke’s ear and finds that it is still stiff: “Things like this don’t just go away,” he says. “It is like my finger, but he puts up with it better.” I: “He has no Parsifal to compose.” “That’s true,” says R., “and every page calls for some new invention.”

A letter from Frau Pusinelli pleases him, she announces her daughter’s engagement. He works, is looking forward to leaving the epic part behind him and starting on the drama with Parsifal’s entrance. In the evening we read the very charming story “La Guerre des Turcomans” to the end.

R. then looks at the map again, and as he is doing so, I recall what he said today at lunch, that among the peoples of the earth it is always the stupidest tribes which are destined to rule over the others, the strongest arrogantly placing their paws on everything: the Macedonians in Greece, the Moors among the Arabs, the Prussians among the Germans, the Turks in Asia. He praises Count Gobineau highly and takes great delight in the story “Les Amants de Kandahar.”

While looking at the map, I also recall that he recently described the Gulf Stream as the brutal element which ordains everything: “Then everything depends on whether one goes along with or resists it.” As always with him, physics and metaphysics merge, rather like the memory of Max and Jupiter in Schiller’s Wallenstein.

This morning he told me how musically Fidi said, “Adieu, Papa,” as he left him after their shower. He complains about the tar ointment and the fact that he can now detect only bad smells.

Saturday, January 22:

R. slept well.

At breakfast we come to the subject of the dispatch of R.'s letter to Frege and the possible consequences. I remember the time when this action, and what it will mean for the children, would have caused me boundless anxiety, but now I am ready to accept in complete confidence everything that R. does, and determined to bear it all joyfully.

R.'s finger is tormenting him, and I find him in very poor spirits when I come down to lunch; it turns out that tar was not the proper treatment.

All kinds of things have arrived, including a pamphlet by Paul de Lagarde. R. glances through it and finds it written in such a way that one does not know whether he is for a certain matter or against it. Dr. Forster has sent an appeal for the founding of an anti-Semitic newspaper. R. relates that he wrote to him from Naples, “Find out whether you fit into Prince Bismarck's plans.” And it seems that they fit in with them, for they are adopting his whole program. “We Bayreuthers will remain very isolated with our ideas.”

At lunch, in connection with Ollivier and Ferry, R. thought of Blandine, saying that Ferry, whom Blandine idolized, is carrying out Ollivier's program, which is, as he once told R., to effect all reforms by political means. During lunch R. gradually regains his spirits, and he even exclaims, “Good food chases off a bad mood.”

The walk, with its prelude of joyfully barking dogs, delights him in spite of the cold and what he calls an “ironic” sunset. He works in the evening and reaches Parsifal's arrow shot.

In the evening we turn to Gobineau. Yesterday, when I informed him that Gobin. had a malicious wife, R. exclaimed how terrible it is that a youthful urge to find fulfillment must then be dragged in misery through one's whole life. He mentions the naive method of divorce among Orientals, and says how wrong the woman's place is in our society is: on the one hand making a show of chivalrous devotion, yet on the other holding her in contempt.

Friend W0I2. pays us a visit; we abandon our reading, and many things are discussed: the response to reproaches for throwing the performances open to the public, then the guarantee certificates and also the subscription for Parsifal, to which R. is looking forward. “I look forward to having a little capital, always supposing that I have paid off my debts with the rest of my earnings.” It is Mimi's birthday; we drink her health and sing her praises. We have sent her the biography; now five of our friends possess it: the King, my father, W0I2., Glasenapp, and Mimi.

When our friends have gone, I say, “How sad that there is nothing more in our glasses.” At once R. calls Wok. and Jouk. back, and another half-bottle of champagne is sent for. In very merry mood, “No one else has half our talents,” R. exclaims, we conclude the evening for the second time.

R. has written to Lilli Lehmann about engaging the Flower Maidens. R. tells Wok. that he has been thinking about the meaning of the word “free” and has gladly adopted the Swiss sense as he once heard it used: in the canton of Appenzell a guide was recommended to him with the words “He is a free man.” “Free” means “true,” someone who has no need to lie; otherwise “free” would always have something negative about it, “freedom,” free of this or that person, but in this case, he says, it is the lie which is negative. The root of the Greek word “eleutheros,” says Wok., has a connection with our word “lauter” [“pure”], so that it is not very far removed from the meaning favored by R.

Sunday, January 23:

R. had a good night.

In our morning conversation he talks profoundly and at length about the mother's womb, the life within it, the sacredness of it, and he ends with praise of Goethe, who recognized the divinity in these manifestations of Nature. But how could one ever have visualized a personal God who created all these things? He also says he can well understand why Goethe, out of his sense of the sacredness of Nature, felt the urge to examine things individually, for one can never pay too much attention to the individual element; to pursue Nature as a whole, to see it as a cosmos, is foolishness.

While we are immersed in these reflections, Isolde and Eva come in to thank us for their new paletots. R. is pleased with the girls; things are no longer going on en cachette [by stealth], here they are, grown up.

He comes to me before lunch, announcing himself as “the old clog-maker” — he has just noticed the great likeness between them. I tell him of my feelings of boundless emotion when I recently glanced through Lohengrin again and read the “Bridal Song,” then the finale of the 2nd act; I say I cannot understand why everybody in Germany did not burst out cheering over its “chaste fire.” “The German brain can only be reached through a sort of stuffy head cold,” he says.

His royalties from Vienna seem very good; now that Die Msinger is beginning to make an impact, he says, he hopes things will get better and better. Some friends at lunch; we drink retrospectively to friend Feustel's birthday. Then we go for a walk in the palace gardens, a lot of people, our children not among them. Memories of Tribschen, its solitariness.

In the evening a great deal about the anti-Semitic agitation, then the Comtesse's story Les Amants de Kandahar, read with great and genuine delight. R. is still much taken with it on second reading; he finds the first love scene wonderful.

Monday, January 24:

Not an entirely good night for R., or for me.

The morning somewhat affected by this, and also R. has business troubles with Leipzig, which, it seems, has not shown the number of performances correctly; I admire R.'s astonishing memory, even for things of this sort. Severe cold — I do not go for a walk with R., since today everything is causing me excessive difficulty.

In the evening we read in Herr Glagau's newspaper, Der Kulturkdmpfer, a good article criticizing natural science today. R. says he is carrying all kinds of literary ideas around with him. His finger is now cured.

Yesterday, when we were talking about Lenbach and various immature things were said about him, R. stated his own opinion with his usual prudence, saying: “Very well, he does not reproduce the Moltke you all know, in a wig and an assumed pose: it is not this he sees; what he sees and depicts is the idea of Moltke, at times exaggerated. What people call his prattling comes from the false position which this man of the people, not highly educated but now famous, occupies in society. And if the reproach can be made that he speaks slightingly of all other painters, that is softened by the fact that he does not value his own painting a whit higher.”

Tuesday, January 25:

R. dreamed of quarrels with Minna, of the salary which, almost always in his dreams, he draws from the Grand Opera, sometimes 12,000, sometimes 6,000 marks, and then of the children, whether he would part from them, but this unresolved. He says, “I only hope I do not blather about such things in my dying hour.”

He works, and we go for a walk in the palace gardens, content with the hard, clear winter.

Fidi had to undergo a little examination with the head teacher at the primary school today; he passes it successfully and is gaily praised by us. We also enjoy watching his curves on the ice, and we bless them all.

W. Frege's telegram is answered to the effect that R. will be perfectly satisfied if only the letter is transmitted.

In the evening R. tells us of two letters, one from Herr v. Weber giving his reasons for abstaining from the anti-Jewish movement in spite of the most comical bad experiences, the other from Lilli Lehmann. R. answers the latter right away, in order to clarify for her benefit the position with Hiilsen regarding the Ring. L. L.'s “Germanic deed” makes us laugh, and R. says, probably with some justice, that Hiilsen would certainly have got the better of them if he had not intervened with his “No.”

The conversation then moves on to Heine, and R. tells how he showed him his French text of Der fl. Holländer, in which, among other things, he had written “amateur” instead of “amant” (Erik to Senta). R. also gives a friendly personal reminiscence of Halevy.

The evening passes in congenial conversation, though R. says to me afterward that when several people are present, he feels as if he must never stop talking. On other occasions, when he is explaining something, I compare him to Frederick the Great giving instructions to Ziethen before the Battle of Torgau. He speaks of the superfluity of the B. Blatter since the new turn of events. (Weber's and Lilli L.'s letters in one of the green cardboard boxes in the salon: correspondence with friends; the reply to the telegram in the corner bureau, red folder i.)

Wednesday, January 26:

“Dear wife, we shan't be returning to Bayreuth — Cicero has invited me to stay here.” Thus I hear R. speaking. But in the morning he has entirely forgotten it.

This leads us to talk of the Romans, and though R. does not care for the cold and wise ones, he says, “With the ancients there is always the possibility of linking onto something, but the further one progresses in time, the more this diminishes, and that is why I regard decadence as a wholly incontrovertible fact.”

Fidi has told us how badly an apprentice is treated in the workshop, and that gives rise to reflections on human brutality, the pleasure a person finds in torturing someone weaker than himself. If it is not a human being, it is an animal. Around lunchtime R. calls me and shows me the landscape gardener's letter and his reply to it (see corner bureau).

In the evening he relates in a humorous way his experiences with the Order of Maximilian and the final confusion between owl and lyre. Then we read Cervantes's “Vidriera” with great delight. In this we once more see him whole, the writer with his melancholy smile, his knowledge of the world, his sense of absurdity and the part it plays in all significant things; the cruelty of human beings, the goodness of convents, etc. R. is frequently struck by the popular use of the word “will” in its Schopenhauerian sense. And all so personal, always pulsing with life, speaking to us with a smile.

Before the reading R. once more touched on the first movement of the Eroica, expressing his unbounded admiration for it. Beethoven must have felt downright alarmed, he says, when he wrote that. And everything in music so direct, whereas in literature everything must always be explained.

I tell R. about the French history I have been reading with the children, the episode of Duplessis-Mornay and H[enri] IV, and R. comments, “Acceptance of monarchy is an expression of pessimism.”

Thursday, January 27:

R. had a good night, and when I am in my bath, he comes to the door and, standing outside, imitates Siegfried's voice bidding me good morning. Our conversation at breakfast revolves around yesterday's reading, which brought Cervantes so close to us again. A letter from Jouk.'s sister, which R. saw on my desk and read, also provides material for a serious discussion.

When, around lunchtime, I go through the salon, R. is sitting at his writing desk, and he calls out to me: “Do you know why I am so absent-minded? Because I think too much about you.” And to this he adds such words that, back in my room, I beseech the God who has allotted all this to me to grant me humility.

The mail brings all sorts of things, including a letter from Lusch, after reading which R. exclaims, “She is a genius!” We go for a walk, R. and I, in spite of the windy weather, watch Fidi, who, almost alone on the ice, is tracing his curves, and who amuses R. by telling him that he trod on a pair of spectacles at Herr Popp's, but they had cost only 80 pfennigs. He has given young Giessel — also to R.'s great amusement — 20 pfennigs for magic tricks, and he tells us the boys have advised the magician to buy herrings with it.

Before our walk Jouk. showed us his sketch of the Grail, which won R.'s approbation. In the afternoon, as a result of my request to Herr v. B[iirkel], sketches of the same subject arrive from Munich and turn out to be completely unusable.

In the evening we read Gobineau's story La Danseuse, and afterward, in my room, R. asks me whether family affairs upset me. I: “No.” Then he tells me he has received a telegram from Prof. Frege, saying he is returning the letters without passing them on.

After we remark with a fleeting smile on such courageousness, long discussion about what to do. I end by saying to R. that everything he wishes or does is acceptable to me, even if I expect blessings only from what goes on between ourselves, sheltered from the world, and none at all from what we attempt outside.

After lengthy and sustained discussions we go off to bed.

Friday, January 28:

R. slept well, and though our morning conversation returns anxiously to the subject which is foremost in our thoughts, it does so in such a way that at lunch R. can refer to it jokingly through the story of a man who spoke of obstacles in a horse race. “What was the obstacle?” “I didn't have a horse.”

R. observes that he also has no horse, that is to say, Hans will not read the letters. But he does some work, and even though he says, “Parsifal bores me, I should like to do something else,” his spirits are raised by some good work. In conversation he recalls my arrival at Tribschen and how I said to him, “Now get down to Siegfried,” and how he eventually completed the whole thing after long interruptions, and with pleasure, despite his momentary mood of disgruntlement. Yesterday he talked about the puppet theater in Heidelberg, our delight in it. Blessed memories return, how cut off from the world we were, and how alone in the world, the children still small.

Our friends in the evening. Rub. plays us the Adagio from Sonata [Opus] 106, in which R. sees the beginnings of all modern music (Schumann, Brahms), and I realize, with something like dismay, that a piece of music held to be the highest degree of art no longer makes very much impression on me — it seems to me more like an improvisation, left to a great artist to interpret, than a work of art in itself. “How different is it!” says R., who can discern little genuine Beethoven in the piece.

After that the conversation turns to my father, St. Gallen (1856), where he played the 106, life at that time, “such a subsoil of manure and snuff for such a thing to flourish in.” And again and again, in the evening and during the day, Hans and what we should now do.

(An absurd photograph has been sent to him for signature; beneath it he writes, “I am not so handsome as this.”)

Saturday, January 29:

As a result of all sorts of things, particularly the one matter, I am so tired and heavy in the morning that I oversleep through breakfast and have no conversation to note down. But soon everything is back in hand again, confirmation arrangements and also a visit to a poor neighbor whose husband has become insane; she told me all her troubles, and I advised her to consult a doctor.

But R. thought at once of Dr. Falko's institute, and I passed this good advice on to her. R. works, but has first to write to Herr N[eumann] on business matters, performance rights, Paris, etc.

Over coffee he explains to our friend Jouk. what universal guilt means: he says it has now come up for reckoning, just like a son inheriting the sins of his father, and renunciation wipes them out. R. goes for a walk with Jouk.; I wait for Councilor Kraussold; since he does not come, I go to him, then again to the dean. The question of certificates of baptism brings R. back to his main desire for legal adoption.

After supper we read the story “La Danseuse de Samakha” to the end, much moved, particularly by the climax. R. then enlarges upon how vanishing races like these Lezghians still bring forth heroic women. “The Renaissance was brought about by women,” he says, adding that it is remarkable how closely this corresponds to the Sch[openhauer] theory that one inherits character from one's father, intelligence from one's mother.

Returning to the subject of guilt, he says: “Perception and idea, however, are free of sin, except when they are guided by the will. But it is terrible how this will exists in a constant state of desire; from the moment a child leaves the womb, it desires, with all the violence of Genghis Khan laying claim to the world.” Reverting to the question of interrelationships, he says, “Nobody dies before he must, and this produces the interrelationship, the link to everything else, also the incurred guilt.”

A report of my conversation with Coun. Kraussold arouses in R. a desire to read Rothschild's letter to Parson Stoecker, in which he makes fun of the parson. “Of course,” says R., “this question is connected with the continued existence of property, and, as long as things remain as they are, they will be our masters.” The movement interests him, however, and he laughs when I say to him that it seems to be peculiarly German, for in any other country it would simply not be understood.

“Good night, my poor Djehane,” says R., who earlier had recalled how in past sad times I could fly into such a rage that I would smash things and even hit people. This makes us laugh heartily, for it is not at all like me. He jests at scars, that never saw a wound!

Sunday, January 30:

R. slept well. Our morning conversation turns to perception and its freedom from sin; yesterday R. told Jouk. that the best thing one could do was to occupy oneself with art, but not in the service of any great power; he comes back to this and says that art is the transfiguration of perception, just as religion is the transfiguration of the Will.

At lunch, too, in connection with the fish, he says how terrible it is that the human being, the only creature to whom Nature has given feelings of sympathy, should then stifle them. R. works, but he is somewhat depressed, our conversations are serious, and my preoccupation with the fate of my neighbor is not exactly conducive of gaiety.

In the evening Rub. plays to us Beeth.'s A Minor Quartet, to our very great delight. “Nobody knows all there is in it,” R. exclaims; he recalls his impression in Paris and says how curious it was that it should have happened in Paris of all places: “When I returned to Germany it was all just plop-plop, like putting things in a sack.” Rub. says that he owes his understanding of the 9th to R.'s program note, and when I express to R. my astonishment that a musician should need such a thing, R. says, “Particularly a musician, for the first movement, for example, which in fact has no melody and begins with those fifths, this tells the true musician nothing, but makes an impression, a ghostly one, on an imaginative layman to a far greater extent.”

He is of the opinion that he and my father have done much toward disseminating Beeth.'s last works, and he tells us how they were regarded “in olden times.” Loldi's shy nature reminded him at supper of Joan of Arc, and he talked about her mission, in connection with the King of F., and her terrible fate. He then expresses his pleasure that it was a German who revived the memory of this being.

His reflections on the dreadfulness of history and of existence lead me to remark that it is a curious trial to have to work for a world one sees in this way, and that for him it is the creative urge which has made it a source of pleasure. Regarding the Catholic church, which R. mentioned today in connection with the experiences Joan of Arc had to undergo, pointing out its horrifying realistic outlook, he recently remarked what an active role it has played in attitudes toward Blandine, Daniel, and myself. Princess W[ittgenstein] described us to my father as having been born under a curse, and the preservation of our lives thus of no special account.

Monday, January 31:

R. tells me his dream: we were at home, but not in this house, in a salon; he was standing by the fireplace, and I, very melancholy, began to play the piano; he asked himself what it was, perhaps something by Chopin, but he almost dozed off; I gazed at him with an expression of mournful ecstasy, a look with which he is familiar, and went on playing, more and more sadly, like an improvisation; he approached me, touched me with his hand, saying: “Please stop,” and at the same time noticing that I was kneeling. “My father is leaving today, I must go with him.” “Oh, then I must also get ready.” He goes into his dressing room, wants to light the fire, but the matches will not ignite; trying hard, he notices one of the big dogs: “How did he get in here?” Then he wakes up.

After this R. does not have a very good day; he does in fact work, but complains of restlessness and nervousness, his fingers are hurting. Herr Levi returns from his journey, tells us all sorts of things about the theater world, not particularly edifying. R. talks with great satisfaction about Stein's article, and he is also content with the other contributions in this issue.

We go, R. and I, for a walk in the palace gardens; the air is springlike, very mild and pleasant, and we stroll around for a long time with the two dogs. But in the evening R. does not feel well, he is very nervous, and it can be regarded as a stroke of good fortune that our discussion of the game of hand-me-the-slate, and whether, with the words “Here stands your uncle,” one should really take the slate, leads us to Hamlet. R. decides against the slate, and says that everything in this is agitation, dawning madness, Hamlet the modern man, disintegrated and incapable of action, seeing the world for what it is.

We are glad to be alone together for a little while after our friends have gone, and R. complains of the state of nerves to which he is subject and also about his uneasy relationship with the Israelites, with whom one must always be so “exalted.”