Monday, February 10:
Did not write in my diary all week, my eyes being bad. R. has many troubles: part of the piano arrangement of Götterdämmerung arrives and is unplayable and unintelligible, the middle voices too prominent, so that the main theme is obscured. He cannot find time for his score, which worries him a lot. “What I should like to do is to keep on producing, to get to be doing. No school, no stage, no one to help me. There I stand and still have to spend long years working on my past creations to put them in proper order.”
Herr Schott sends the 10,000 florins, and R. reflects on the overtures: “Lohengrin's Journey,” “Tristan,” “Epilogue to Romeo and Juliet,” “Brünnhilde,” “Wieland the Smith.”
Unfortunately R. still has troubles with the house, which I cannot take over for him, and his mood has a very depressing effect on me. I am like someone coming down with an illness: hindered, but not really ill. My eye ailment is also an obstacle. R. is very kind, always reading to me in the evening, Gibbon.
The present time seems to us likewise a time of decay, in which great individuals perform great deeds which, however, have no real meaning. R. deplores the fact that through the introduction of Latin the peasants were suddenly cut off from all culture; that had not been the case previously. Brandt writes that it will probably not be possible to put on the performances before '76, which is probably a good thing. If only R. does not overexert and exhaust himself! This fear will not leave my heart.
Recently Siegfried caused me sorrow for the first time. He went to his father, looked at the library, and said, “This will one day belong to me; when I am big, you will be dead then.” The mayor recently touched R. greatly by the way he said, “An undertaking like this must be brought to completion; a deed so selfless as this of R.'s must receive recognition; for R. has no need of fame and does not need his name and his works spread around, etc.”
The barber says that a play was produced in Passau entitled Wagner's Dream, in which all the characters R. had created came to greet him. Bechstein is sending us a new grand piano, the old one is sent away, and the Érard is again installed in our house. For me a host of memories come flying back.