Monday, November 17:
R. works hard; he is now orchestrating the scene between Waltraute and Brünnhilde. After lunch, the children’s playing causes us to exclaim, laughing, “Oh, how these sounds rupture my ear!” and this brings us to Die Jungfrau von Orleans. “Schiller has presented the problem splendidly,” says R., “but it is just that, presented; one does not believe in her love for Lionel.”
R. agrees when I say that Schiller might perhaps have done better to let Joan tell about her meeting with the Briton: “he looked into my eyes, I let the sword fall,” etc., as R. did in Tristan und Isolde. R. says yes, some soldiers might remark that after this meeting she is no longer her usual self, since her wild courage has been broken; she hears this and realizes that she has broken her vow and lost the strength of her chastity.
“There was no basis for it,” R. says, “which shows what a living thing myth is, and how one cannot abandon it without becoming lifeless. Lionel has no place in the story of the Maid. But Ophelia is in the Hamlet saga; he has to be tested by a maiden, and so Shakespeare imagines this maiden. In the same way the relationship of Siegfried to Brünnhilde could not have been invented. The saga or history must provide the guidelines, and the poet then visualizes the characters.”
Of Fidi R. says: “There stands a glory. He will bring it about. He forms the third in our pact. I have no other.” R. visits Feustel and returns with a heavy heart. Feustel is of the opinion that the conference with Brandt and Hoffmann should be put off. R. is against that, though he does not really know from where help is to come, for Wesendonck says nothing!
In the evening, our dear Luther, who was also spared no bitter cup!