Tuesday, April 20:
I dream about Das Rheingold and a wonderful production of it in Munich; R., on the other hand, sees me lying in my coffin surrounded by the children. This surprises me, inasmuch as yesterday evening I did succumb to melancholy thoughts of death, affected by R.’s state of suffering.
Children’s day as usual. At lunch R. discusses the social problem with me and says he would gladly sacrifice all his art for a century to see the lower classes of society achieve a purification and reformation of the prevailing circumstances.
The children in town, I at home with my embroidery. R. reads me Schopenhauer’s chapter on “The Purposeful in the Fate of the Individual.”
A letter from Nuitter speaks of the sixth performance of Rienzi, “which is now being given there three times a week and will probably make its way into the provinces.”
Le bien et le mal que l’on prévoit n’arrive point. — Frederick the Great. A disturbing or comforting saying, depending on how one looks at it.
All my weeping has left me with a buzzing in my ears, which torments and also somewhat alarms me. R. had trouble with the furniture moving; I can never get over my surprise at how angry such admittedly irritating things make him, and yet he will persist with them.