Wednesday, July 14:
Rose with such a headache that I could not supervise Loulou’s practice. Gradually got better. R. has had a nice letter from Chandon and with it a consignment of wine. After lunch the scene painter from Munich, Rheingold sketches!
R. was jokingly indignant today about the summer, that it has already arrived: “I want to live terribly long.” Lulu dictated to me a letter to her father; it made my heart so heavy. In Paradise the serpent is concealed, it has settled in my heart, and all around is happiness, so beautiful and bright. Let us pray! . . .
Thinking about my fate, I feel as if it is trying to make me recognize both deepest sorrow and highest happiness; my poor heart contains them both! Union with my beloved, unbounded happiness, grief over the suffering caused, inconsolable sorrow!
While R. is taking his walk and the children are in bed, I abandon myself to my thoughts; weeping, I sing to a tune of my own, “Who never ate with tears his bread”; the light starts to fade, nearby I hear Siegfried give a hiccup! The doctor was here today and unfortunately could see the spot more clearly than recently; R. comes home, I wipe away my tears, joy returns with him!
We talk about the stories of Gottfried Keller, how much more significant they are than Auerbach’s; of Tieck R. says that he lacked the painful concision which characterizes the great poet. After supper I read to R. Serov’s essays on Berlioz; they are very good. As I write this down I have a feeling of anxiety which seems to me like a death agony.
How childish of my father to speak of “pangs of conscience”; how could I ever feel those? But fellow suffering, that is what oppresses my heart. I understand, too, how Parzival suffers and how he searches for Amfortas. Will I ever again be able to feel an unmixed pleasure?