Friday, January 31:
R. had a good night, that is to say, he only had to get up once. In bed he says: “How many dismal things I have lived through! When I think of those visits to Minna in Brestenburg! And how glad I then was to be by myself again and to have my work - what would I have done without that. . . ?”
After lunch I tell him how much I like his introduction to the 3rd and 4th volumes (of his collected writings), which I read again today; also how pleased I am that he has given the whole edition such simple accompaniments as the introduction to Volume I. Then we talk about friend Wolzogen and his character - how nicely and how quietly he and his family arranged their move here, etc.
R. goes for a walk and returns with the news of MacMahon’s resignation and the election of Grévy.
Curious France, now with a sober, entirely bourgeois government! He also shows me the development of American activity in the following account: [not found]. Art and religion, depart in peace! But perhaps somewhat more truthfulness in the world.
In the evening R. reads to us Plutarch’s splendid chapter about garrulity, also Socrates’s turning back on the advice of his daemon. “I so much enjoy immersing myself in this world,” he says.
After that we take up Bach’s Preludes and Fugues again, after a long break: numbers 4-8 in the second book. Of the seventh R. says, “One can see the Countess from Figaro in that.” And of the 2nd of these four preludes he says, “He wanted to do something especially beautiful there.” After one of the fugues he says, “Canonic devices - they are repeated, too, so people should be able to put up with the repetitions of my Leitmotive.”
Before our reading Herr R. played to us the Overture to Das Liebesverbot, in which the banning theme seems to me very good - soulless, legal, harsh, dramatic; when I say I like the Overture to Die Feen better, R. observes that the other (F.-Verb.) shows more talent. He searches out a few passages, but apart from the “Salve Regina” (Tannhäuser) he finds it all “horrible,” “execrable,” “disgusting.”
It is well orchestrated, he says - “That I could do in my mother’s womb” - but the Overture is all thunder and lightning.