Friday, January 13:
[Enclosed in the Diaries is a sketch by Cosima for a poem, Sangue reale, “true blood.”]
In the morning R. observes that I would have behaved like Lucie, run off to the convent during the night! We think of these stories with pleasure, and also understand the things which put us off them at the beginning.
Today is Jouk.’s birthday, and since we would like to give him something, I go to the antique dealer’s with him and the children, but to no avail. Returning home, I find R. very run down, and at lunch he even leaves the table for a while, but he soon returns and proposes the toast very cordially. After lunch we visit a house which has been offered us. He then works, and in the evening, in honor of Jouk., the chorus from Die Feen is played, then the witch’s ballad (sung by R.) and the Overture to Die Feen.
During the last of these R. goes out; I go to see what he is doing - he is putting the finishing touches on his score: “It gave me no rest,” he says. The splendid sounds of the Tannhäuser march ring out, he comes in, and all is completed! With this, as with all his other works, he had feared being interrupted by death - that is what he told us at lunch today! As he is talking, I place the Monreale bowl on his desk, and when he goes to fetch something from his room, he discovers it, stays out for a while, then comes in with the heavy box. He likes it! He recognized Eva first, also Fidi. Then everything is told - how the theme of Monreale was adapted in this way by Jouk. at my request. We drink to Parsifal. Our friends depart later than usual; we stay up, R. and I, and talk of the various completions (Tristan, Meistersinger), and of life in general, and go off to bed in a mood of exaltation and peace.
A few more things I have to tell about this evening: first, that R. told us the story behind his first ballad (boy and swan). Then, that he spoke about the orchestration of Parsifal; the wind instruments would complain, he said, but when he recalled how, in Martha, for instance, the four horns are used time and again in the stupidest way, then he felt comforted. He tells me that the A-minor chord (as Kundry falls to the ground) will make an impression on me; the terror of sanctity flows from it, and it will have to be very beautifully played, he says.