Wednesday, February 10:
In a dream I gave birth to a son. As I awoke and rose from my bed I found my camellia had blossomed; since I had involuntarily connected it in my mind with Siegfried, I am overjoyed. May the souls of my children blossom as handsomely and as tranquilly!
In the morning read Winckelmann’s biography, Homo vagus et inconstans!, much moved. How clearly the German genius speaks in this man; the poor cobbler’s son, born in a land that at the time hardly possessed a language, bears within his spirit the Greek ideal. His conversion to Catholicism an act of aesthetic infatuation which he resolved emotionally, carried out with terrible difficulty, and eternally regretted, but never regarded as frivolous.
At table R. told me he would be finished this month with the copying and wanted then to journey forth into the old land of romance. I say to him, “Once more you hover near me, forms and faces.” In the morning he also began his article on Devrient, and he read it aloud to me. After lunch played passages from Siegfried. He leaves me, saying that, now that I am with him, he knows what he has lived for, only I should not weep so much.
I go with Loldi into the garden and reflect on what I have to do. I am not arrogant and am always astonished that he needs me, but I believe with all my heart what he once again said to me today at lunch: that if I went away, his life and living, his thinking and his thoughts would be at an end, and for that reason I myself no longer hold to the idea of a two-month separation. Yet I do not know how to set about getting the children to me here; no plan seems right. Much grief on that account.
Upstairs, read Calderón’s El secreto a voces again, without being much absorbed by this masterpiece, because I am too worried. In the evening the delayed doughnuts with punch, and a reading of Albrecht Dürer’s letter on receiving the news that Luther had been arrested. Profound and painful religious feelings; how different such a character is from the sunny, life-loving, divine Italian masters! And the powerful, helpless language! Wonderfully moving! Certainly no such son has ever been born to any Latin nation.
Yesterday R. told me he was stopped on the Reuss Bridge by a tympanist, who said he had been one of the musicians in R.’s concerts in Zurich in 1859. He declared that the whole Zurich orchestra was full of gratitude to R., since it had now been given what R. had previously demanded from the members of the Music Society, namely, a fixed salary and a permanent engagement. Thirty-two people are now engaged summer and winter. R. sent his best wishes to the gentlemen of the Comité with the message that they could have introduced the measure somewhat earlier.