Friday, March 7:
R. again had a very wretched night. But, as always when our conversation touches on intellectual things, he is lively and spirited in the morning, breakfasting beside my bed.
A passage in the first movement of the Ninth Symphony is occupying his thoughts, the passage in which the tension begins to mount, only to recede again; he sees in this a portrait of the will, which makes a tremendous effort only to sink back in impotence. When one thinks what comes of all the excitement which the embrace of love properly is, how it takes on bodily form, separates: here a great effort has been made, and the culmination of this raging desire, this blind craving, is an old man!
When I remark that no one conveys to us the essence of things as Beethoven does, R. says perhaps Bach, and because of the fugal form in a remarkable way the music is like a being who has gone through various developments before being projected back as drama through a magic lantern.
As we are recalling fine points of detail in Mathilde Mallinger's portrayal of Eva, R. says, "How remarkable that was, when the girl seemed so stupid!" I feel constrained to compare this phenomenon of talent with a phenomenon of memory: often people far away appear quite distinct in my mind, but, if I then seek consciously to retain their image, it disappears entirely.
With the children. Lulu is causing me much worry. Idiotic complaints from Graz: a Countess Coudenhove, who regards herself as a patroness of the W. Society, cannot understand why Wagner will not go there to conduct. R. very vexed.
He goes for a walk and returns home in cheerful spirits; but the domestic disturbances soon upset him. We take refuge in the biography, of which we write several pages.