Sunday, July 25:
Delighted to observe Lulu’s progress in piano playing; R. interrupts our practice. Talk about the Mendès couple: she a child of Nature, he a highly cultured man, but unfortunately the French character is like a barrier; they put V. Hugo on the same level as Shakespeare.
“The French lack poetic contemplation,” says R. “Either they resort to tirades with exaggerated gestures, or they are terribly dry. Utterly untalented as they are as regards art, they could acquire their arrogant sense of superiority only on account of the wretched state of their neighbors. They see themselves being imitated everywhere, and must consequently come to regard themselves as the one true model. Only music might perhaps be able to widen their horizons.”
R. is very indignant that precisely at this point of time the newborn Saxon Prince has been given the Pope as his godfather, “whereas it is only the good nature of the people which allows its royal family to remain Catholics.”
At noon the Mendès people; after lunch M. Villiers reads us his play. The same person in whom we could discern no talent has found in real life inspiration for a good play, which he read to us with marvelous skill. “There are at any rate established conditions there,” says R. “Bad as they are, they nevertheless provide a picture. We Germans have no established conditions.”
At lunch R. explained how differently one must work in the symphony and in music drama, where all is permissible except stupidities, since the action explains everything. Beethoven, he said, had only once forsaken serenity in the symphony, and there, with his infinite art, he had resorted to words.
Take leave of our excellent friends; when they invite me to come with R. to Paris, to Lohengrin, and try to press me, I explain to them that I must make sacrifices in order to prove to another being how earnestly I regard a life which has imposed on me the sad necessity of wounding him. Moved silence. Painful thoughts of Hans and his fate; difficulty in going to sleep.
At dessert, introduction of the children, who were judged very pretty and good.
In the morning a letter from Richter, who has requested his dismissal. He is being asked to stay on; R. answers that he should insist on his dismissal.