Monday, November 4:
In the morning R. says that he has again been thinking about the birth of drama from music: "As the baby is nourished in the womb by the mother's blood, so does drama emerge from music; it is a mystery; once it emerges into the world, the outward circumstances of life begin to exert their influence."
Yesterday evening we once again came to the topic which is always preoccupying us, that of the Reformation, and also Gustavus Adolphus. I told R. that in my eyes he was a German. "Of course," says R., "he is just as much a German as Alexander the Great was a Greek."
Today R. said: "I spend more and more time reflecting on what being a German means, and for me it is becoming a matter of pure metaphysics; Slavs and Celts are mixed in with us, and we have absorbed them; it is only the Roman Empire, the eunuch system, with which we have nothing to do. Grimm, it seems, did not take the Celtic character nearly seriously enough. I have been thinking about that; the bloody lance comes from a bardic mystery, Parzival is also Celtic, after all. Thus I am quite happy to liken the Germans to the Greeks in the way they handle legends. The Greek mysteries knew nothing of a World Creator, they worshiped the supremacy of Nature, because they feared it, and when Plato talks of a god, it is a misunderstanding of the Egyptian mystery; and yet God as a symbol of the mystery, of the inexplicable, that one can accept."
At lunch, as an instance of a spontaneous understanding, I told him that yesterday, as he was singing Siegmund's "Waffenlos hohnt mich der Feind," I found myself thinking: My God, where will he find a sword for his fight with Hunding? Will he perhaps pass by a smithy?! This makes R. laugh, and he tells me that just on the previous day, while reading Hunding's threat to Siegmund in the copyists' room, he thought to himself: My God, have you not made a vital blunder there? Where is Siegmund to get his sword?! This makes us laugh a lot.
In the afternoon we go for a walk; first we walk, then inspect our house, and R. takes me up on the scaffolding. While descending, I behave very stupidly, become dizzy and scream! R. says it is a lack of confidence in him. Good Heavens!
In the evening he talks about a passing fancy to go through the works of Berlioz, eliminating the grotesque moments, in other words, to rescue him for posterity, "for now he is done for; the French don't play him, preferring to do Lachner, Raff, Schumann, and yet how much more significant Berlioz is!"
Then he tells me he has been going through the first movement of Beethoven's B-flat Sonata and was quite overwhelmed by the beauty and tenderness and richness of its detail, which passes by in such a way that nobody notices all that has been put into it. "With pride I tell myself that I am aware of a fellow feeling." "People talk about the music of the future; what future would be worthy of such a work?"
He talks about orchestrating this sonata, in order to make it more accessible: "As it is, only the greatest of virtuosos can play it, but if it were performed as orchestrated by me, a sort of tradition could be established." We read through the sonata together with indescribable delight; its richness of detail is like flowers hidden in a meadow.
Wrote to my father and Countess Krockow.