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!”