Sunday, December 22:
R. breakfasts at my bedside and tells me that during the night he was thinking what a gap now divided us from the Greeks, arising from the fact that in our times women take part in everything. It was this which introduced a note of gallantry into literature, thus putting an end to truthfulness in all its former naivete. It is a bad thing, he says, that something one wishes to offer outstanding women in homage, acceptance into the circle of male intellectual activity, has now become the rule for every silly goose! And now every goose can put in her word!
R. had a curious and melancholy dream: his past life with me was a happiness past, and resignation had taken its place; he asked himself how Cosima was now bearing her life, and with that thought woke up.
R. has a lunchtime meeting at Herr Karl Kolb’s house and returns very pleased with the conversation, which he had been fearing; he said the speeches, joking in tone though serious in content, had contained much that was melancholy, and that in this male gathering there had been no crudity, though certainly a lot of wit.
Among other things he tells me that Georg Kolb had proposed a toast: to the true genius of music, the benefactor of Bayreuth, the man on whom the future of Bayreuth really depends. This introduction had startled everybody; the fact that the wit of Bayreuth should pick on R. and then propose his health in an almost mocking way was generally felt to be a piece of tactlessness. But then the speaker concluded with the words, “Long live the director of the society of dilettantes, Herr Mattenheimer!” whereupon the company in great relief burst into hearty laughter.
But this changed back into an atmosphere of awkwardness, since the man thus toasted remained in his seat, ashamed and highly embarrassed. Then R. rose and in serious and dignified words pointed out what art owed to the services of the dilettantes, whereupon Herr Mattenheimer was very touched and proposed R.’s health in moving tones.
The children, Daniella and Blandine, have gone to a distribution of presents to the poor. I write in the meantime to M. Schl. R. has written to Herr Niemann to demand at least a correction of the lies published in the newspapers regarding the Tristan project; no reply, and suggest to her a reading by R. of Götterdämmerung in her salon.
A letter from Graz concerning the foundation of a W. Society there; God knows, according to new reports from New York the Society there is completely illusory. Very serious mood.