Saturday, August 16:
Fine weather. I in the garden with the children, while R. works diligently on his score. Over dessert he says to me: “The worst thing about old age is not that one loses one’s fire, but that one’s sum total of bad experiences literally forces one not to think about the world. In youth ambition plays such a big role—you write your Holländer and your Tannhäuser, fine, but you don’t yet know whether and in what way you are a somebody; but in old age ambition has nothing more to say, and to keep the will to work you have, like Goethe, to follow a rigorous discipline. One’s conceptions of the world and of life become more and more dismal, and need begins to look like a protection against sorrow!”
At the theater yesterday we spoke about Parsifal, whose abode is being built; will he be permitted to write it? This is my constant question, this my prayer!
In the afternoon drove out to the Riedelsberg with the children; the Lerchenfelds there. Such embarrassments we put up with for the sake of the children, who eat afternoon tea and supper there with sparkling eyes.
In the evening continued reading Goethe—it is his “noble simplicity of language” which R. so much admires—and in so sentimental a period! Spoke about the women of the 18th century; Charlotte von Kalb is the one R. finds most sympathetic.