Sunday, November 23:
Melancholy morning. I try to persuade R. not to hasten the furnishing of our house by taking out loans. He does not receive this well, finding me timid. This makes me weep, for I have absolutely no more wishes of my own, and am only haunted by catastrophes which I see looming on all sides. I try hard to get a grip on myself and hope to give no further impression of melancholy.
Malwida’s indisposition is also worrying us. The children (Daniella and Blandine) present a puppet play, Boni surprising us with her wit and calm, Daniella excitedly directing it all. R. plays the overture and entr’acte music. [Attached to this entry, a handwritten theater program: “Sunday, November 25, for the 1st time: The Abducted Maiden, or, Sunshine Follows Rain, play in 6 acts. Beginning 4 o’clock precisely, ending around 6 o’clock.”]
In the evening R. reads to us the little sketch of Die Sieger. How splendid! I hope to God, who protects me, that he will complete this work. God will hear me, and I want, mean to force him to it through this prayer! Read the original legend in Burnouf.
R. says he will write Parsifal when he is 70 and Die Sieger when he is 80; I say when he is 65 and 70. He says yes, if I do not hold him back through my timidity, but allow him to get the house finished quickly. We laugh; but I am always restraining my tears.
Talk about the pedantic elaborations of the Indians, their divisions, circles, etc.: it looks pedantic, but if one examines it more closely, one sees it is always profoundly meaningful, as, for example, that the Chandalas stem from the marriage of a Sudra with a Brahman woman; bad seed in a noble soil produces dreadful things. The Greeks also possessed this pedantry, it seems to me; it is like the arithmetic of music; in Christianity, in the mystics, it is not present to the same degree. It is as if this aid is required, like the apparatus of a diver, to plumb the depths.
R. has the feeling that the Kshatriyas, who were overcome by the...