Sunday, January 5:
Very fine weather, still no winter; I go for a walk with the children after having talked again with R. about the strangeness of these times in which everything is against us; our good Weitzmann wrote so fearfully about the projected Berlin concert that it became quite ridiculous; Dr. Pusinelli writes that Dresden is not worth bothering about, etc. Nevertheless, a cheerful lunch with Richter and the children, despite sorrowful talk of Bismarck’s leaving the Prussian government; the greatest deeds can do nothing for the greatest of men. Bismarck has created Germany, R. a German theater, and both have to keep starting again from the beginning.
R. visits our house with Richter and is very pleased with it. I write to A. Frommann, from whom I received an excellent letter (she says of the Grand Duchess, “She saves, and she is in a bad mood” - this as an occupation!). The copyists come in the evening, without Herr Kastner, who has fulfilled all our worst misgivings, and Richter, who tells us all sorts of unpleasant things about Hans: his unbounded rudeness, etc.; that makes me very sad. Thank goodness, R. goes through parts of Act III of Götterdämmerung, then Tristan, and finally the Idyll, which charms us all. “Yes,” says R., “that was our poetic period, the dawn of our life, now we are in the full glare of the midday sun, my dear wife, and climbing the mountain.” The memory moves me to tears, but much more the work itself. Alas, what gifts have here been deposited in an earthly frame, how well I understand what he must suffer when life eternally keeps him from pouring out these gifts! He must be in a continual state of convulsion, like a poor bird kept from flying!