Monday, September 16:
While putting the new house in order I take up my diary again. Every day since Monday the 9th I have been driving into town at 8 o'clock, returning to the Fantaisie in the evening at 6, even 7 o'clock; many furnishing difficulties, but in good spirits. R. always comes to fetch me.
On Sunday the 15th stayed at the Fantaisie all day; R. reads me his splendid work, completed on the previous day. On the first day of the moving the military band at the Fantaisie made a truly magical impression on me; as I arrived home they were playing the Prize Song from Die Meistersinger. My tiredness was gone. The moonlight on the huge trees also helps me, but it disturbs R. to see me refreshing myself in this way.
Nice letter from my father, Wednesday, announcing a visit. Later one from Frau von Meyendorff, I had asked my father to write to her, as friendly, I think, as it is in her to be. During this time R. received a diploma making him a free man in Bologna, which pleased him greatly and really puts the German cities to shame.
R. again has trouble with his architect, Herr Bruckwald. The matter of the scene decorations is also not progressing, and how things stand with the funds I do not know, only that Baron Loen is paying nothing either in or out, after giving us the figure of 70 certificates of patronage. R. has, alas, taken too much on himself!
Nice letter from Marie M., also from my mother, who is now well. R. gave me great pleasure yesterday evening by reading to me Gorres's foreword to Lohengrin, the connection between the myth of the Holy Grail and other myths of antiquity, profoundly stimulating and gripping. R. also reads me a charming poem by A. Schlegel, Saint Luke, which had reminded him of my "passion for the visual arts."
Today, Monday, wrote to M. Muchanoff. R. calls for me at four o'clock, tells me in the carriage that he "howled like a chained watchdog"; he was reading the dedication to Faust. Following on our conversation, we take up the first part of it again in the evening, and R. reads it to me in a way I shall never again experience.
He was seeking to make clear to himself the tone in which it should be spoken, simple and natural throughout. All would be lost, he says, if the actor were to give the impression of being conscious of its metaphysical content. "Land and sea, this is the complete map," R. says. "In it Goethe's optimism seeks refuge; he is thinking: these are after all facts, which continue to exist, whatever happens." I go to bed deeply affected and comforted in the highest sense by his reading and his remarks.