Thursday, November 7:
We decide to start our journey next Sunday, by which time, we hope, these incomprehensible people in Vienna, without whom the contracts with the workers cannot be concluded, will have written.
We recall with gratitude the help given us yesterday by Frithiof. R. comes down to breakfast with Faust in his hands, and we read the scene with the Baccalaureus as well as the birth of the Homunculus; every word a feast.
Our reading starts us discussing the right kind of stage for this work, arising from the thoughts expressed by R. in his newest pamphlet. "The Homunculus should be manipulated by a ventriloquist; during the walk, the ground should revolve and various landscapes be shown, Faust and Mephisto should appear to be walking; there should be a sort of podium, as in a circus, and in this particular scene it would represent the city gates; for the dance they would descend from it. It would not matter if certain events took place behind the audience; people turning around to watch would enliven the scene, make the audience part of it. Wagner's laboratory should be a sort of stable with a pointed roof, Faust's chair at the back. The audience should not of course bother its head about every detail on stage, a natural waterfall costing so many cents and so on; many things would only have to be indicated. One sees to what extent Goethe always had the puppet show in mind, as, to give one example, when Mephisto says to the young people, 'You don't applaud, the devil is old; grow old, in order to understand him.'"
R. discovers a bad misprint: when the Homunculus said "I may detect the dot on the i," it should read "you."
What a fine pastime for a rich man to build this Faust theater and to make the people a present of this wonderful work in occasional performances! I feel the right actors could be found, for in contrast to France, where talents, like their well-established works, are always seen in the best light, so much genuine talent seems to be going to waste in Germany. In France a few good speeches are enough to turn a man into a minister, whereas in Germany R. has to knock laboriously at every door before he can turn his thoughts into reality, and that after having given the stage five successful works! R. says wickedness has taken up all the available room; every space is occupied.
A musical director from Barmen writes asking R. to conduct a concert there for Bayreuth. Mendelssohn a foreigner, utterly un-German. The hymn Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rat played at funerals and public entertainments. R. says: "I am glad that, of the German musicians I find repugnant, two are Jews: Hiller and Joachim. What, for example, have I done to Joachim to turn him from the most extravagant of enthusiasts into the most treacherous of enemies? It would be a good joke to give Wilhelmi the letter in which he offered me his services for the Nibelungen theater, and tell him to work something out with Joachim so as not to jeopardize his own position! But it would just be a joke, and I am in no mood for that."
Even in the evening nothing from Vienna! R. returns in the evening from the railroad station, where he went to send off another telegram, but he regrets the loss of his seven florins; it was an 80-word telegram with forty words reply paid. "I should like to have the hole filled up," he says, "tell myself the Germans are bad, and not bother with them any more; but then along comes the King and wants my things performed; so patience and perseverance are called for."
In the way one trouble follows another, we discover that our house is very damp. Great concern for the children. We seem to have been directed here somewhat thoughtlessly.
In the evening a letter from Marie M. Herr von Perfall wishes to give a performance for Bayreuth; the King is commissioning for himself alone plays in which Louis XIV appears. How timid everyone is!
In the evening continued with Grimm's preface. Before that R. shows me a wonderful poem by Emperor Heinrich VI, with which our edition of the Minnesänger begins. We then read some poems by Wolfram. "One must now and again cast a glance into this world to know where one belongs."
Mild weather. Letter from my mother: the priest in the village of Puyraveau told her that he had visited Lourdes with many doubts, but, having seen the miracle with his own eyes, he can no longer doubt.