Monday, November 16:
At breakfast we discuss the music of yesterday. I tell R. that with regard to myself the curious thing has always been that from the moment music begins to sound, all images, concepts, the whole world of appearances and of the intellect, disappear. He says he has always sought the mystical significance of things; for example, in the introduction of Beethoven’s A Major Symphony he always thinks of the passage in Faust: “Passing gold buckets to each other, how heavenly powers ascend and descend!” and perhaps indeed this is what it might signify! When I go down to him at about eleven, he says, “I am just writing ‘Hagen in great alarm perceives the Rhinemaidens.’” Much snow, cozy atmosphere indoors. In the evening read the report of the general staff.