Sunday, June 9:
Not a good night, in consequence of the vilenesses. I reproach myself for not having urged R. more firmly to take no notice of this rubbish; I am too easily persuaded by R., and because I want to spare him unpleasantness, I do not perhaps help him with my judgment as much as I could. He drafts a final word for the A.A.Z.; I do not yet know whether that is a good thing, he feels it is.
Visit from the Feustels. We then go through Christus and come to the conclusion that the style has not changed in the Catholic church; as in the eighteenth century the castrati served both opera and church, now it is grand opera which influences the church style of my father. Strict old church modes are interwoven in the works of Halévy, Meyerbeer, etc., and it is these which exercised a decisive influence on my father in his youth.
At lunch our friends and unfortunately also the “general,” who makes an increasingly bad impression on us and whom Wagner calls a “blown-up, buccaneering bag of nothingness.” In the afternoon R. plays and sings passages from Götterdämmerung, but he is melancholy because it has become so alien to him; he sees the necessity of getting down to music again.
Letter from Prof. N., who sends us Herr von Wilamowitz’s pamphlet attacking him. Observations arising out of this newest example of nastiness; R. sees the present state of the world as a sad one: professors educating more specialist professors, no humanistic education spreading its influence; the jurist, for example, never thinks of studying philology and philosophy, just all specialist subjects.