Thursday, October 26:
Leafing through the Brown Book just now, I read a bit of Parzival. How that time lies once more like a sacred dream, — once more like a lost paradise behind me. — Oh Cosima! Will it ever come to my quietly completing my works and entering with you the promised land of peace? — How storms rage ever and ever anew! I desire — so it seems — the most unnatural state of affairs which the world just will not accede to. My trouble is great. Always something new hounds and oppresses. From within and from without. This love of the King’s does seem a veritable martyr’s crown. Treachery lurks within with an intensity which our tender longing for peace is no match for. From without I hear the cry: it is high time, the catastrophe is in preparation; Germany must know what it has in the King, otherwise it will be too late: all is pressing for decision. 8? That, I consider, is not to be taken so literally. Yet I can well see that in no direction is one able to rock oneself to sleep in peace: how taken unawares we always are! How shall the work of all these troubles prosper? — My sole comfort now is that I know how pessimistic I have become, and that accordingly, in my pessimism, I exaggerate and may now and then be pleasantly disappointed. Sweet comfort! —
Oh, my love, my love! — Ought we then not soon to set out on the quiet way to the cooling couch? —
And what devil suddenly has me in this Vienna! My dentist finishes today, but I am not to travel on the same day because the slightest cold could cause me great trouble. But tomorrow will be Friday. To stay until Saturday merely to avoid Friday is too crazy. But as I am superstitious I shall, against this, let it depend on an omen: if today or tomorrow I receive a good letter from Monsalvat, I shall defy Friday: if not, I shall avoid it. The day that I live Ill gladly give over to at last once properly preparing for myself the day that I shall live. —
Yesterday, as the result of a very, very poor night I was in a bad way: a tooth operation was undertaken; [reading] Balzac brought balm — in the evening an hour at the Standhartners’. From Frankfurt I have good business news. Now today I’ll just make ready to go to Rotsch. to see what might come of it.
Oh heavens, would I could still be happily with you and little Isolde! ‘Happy’!! Yes, we could be: I have the most incredible talents for being favoured: one only needs to pack me up properly and wrap me up a bit soft and immediately the gas inside becomes willing and rises freely into the air where then is smiling and bliss. — Ah! My love! My love! — Cosima — Cosima — Cosima!!