Thursday, October 30:
Letter from Prof. Lenbach: he saw my father in Vienna, and he had remarked that it would be too great a sacrifice for me to travel alone to Pest. R. is vexed by this.
Distraction provided by the arrival of our good friend Heckel, who tells us all sorts of curious things, for instance, of a traveling salesman who told him he would not give a cent for Bayreuth, even if he were a millionaire. “Why not?” He liked the first works, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger, but to build a theater especially for Rienzi — no!! On the other hand, a Herr Schön, whose wife became dangerously ill and cried out on her sickbed: “Now I shall never be able to go to Bayreuth.” They made a vow, should she recover, to buy two certificates of patronage, and this is what happened! And an opponent, Cahn, was so overcome when he heard the “Love Song” at a concert that he wrote some very fine, detailed articles on Der Ring des Nibelungen for Die Grenzboten. Plans, projects.
In the afternoon a meeting in the street with Prof. Nietzsche. He, completely outlawed, tells us unbelievable things: that the International is reckoning him as one of their own, encouraged in that direction by a writer in Die Grenzboten, whose article, entitled “Herr Nietzsche and German Culture,” exceeds all bounds and actually denounces our friend!