Monday, June 28:
Wanted to get up early, but had another severe hemorrhage and had to remain in bed, to the great dismay of R., who, having risen in good spirits, soon found himself feeling miserable. Soon, however, he goes off to "Tellus and Sol" (Wotan and Erda). "If I had more of a philosophical bent," he says, "I should describe this prototype of all individualization; the separation of the planets from the sun is the beginning of all phenomena."
I asked him whether he thought that much still remained to be discovered in the philosophical field after Schopenhauer. He replied, "To be described, much; to be discovered, I think not." Then he came to the conclusion that the symbols of Christianity offered less to the trained mind than those of the Indian religion, because the latter were the outcome of a very advanced culture, whereas the former originated in the poorest and most neglected classes.
Lusch does some copying for the King. I read some of Goethe's occasional verses, "Lieben, leiden, lernen," and R. works, though reluctantly: "When I think that I shall never again hear a single note of my things, and that I am letting Das Rheingold be done without me, where should I find the urge to make music? I do it purely for you."
In the afternoon I read Sophocles's Ajax: tremendous, morally uplifting impression. Gave Lusch her piano lesson. In the evening, Eckermann.