Monday, April 14:
Splendid day! R. slept well and long. The conversation at breakfast brings him to present-day music: “I clearly feel,” he says, “that what I said in The Artwork of the Future is true: that the 9th Symphony is also the last. Now all the young people pin their hopes on excessive accents, which can only be understood through a knowledge of the story, and the result is a mess. It is frightful.”
When we were recently talking about ghosts and apparitions, he said, “It is the appearance of the inaudible which so frightens us.”
Nice drive with the children to Drossenfeld on the river Main. Fidi wishes for a salon and a bedroom on the meadow. Walked along the valley. In the morning Eva tells us that a bird has made its nest on the balcony of the nursery; we go to look, and see a little warbler busy feeding its young.
In the evening to the theater; I persuade R. to go, since I am considering using the company in connection with his birthday. It is horrible, the plays as well as the actors. “Hain,” R. suddenly exclaims, and he tells me that (according to Berlioz’s Soirées d’orchestre) this was what the Sultan cried when he wanted someone to be conveyed to the Bosporus. This made us laugh a lot.