Friday, August 13:
Four letters: wrote to Franz Lenbach; R. receives news from Hermann Brockhaus and from Richter, who describes the conditions in Munich as ever more horrible. Nothing happened. R. at his copying.
In the evening I read to him in astonishment the passage I found in the Wanderjahre concerning drama and theater. "It does not disturb me," says R., who knows it well.
We talk about memoirs; R. said, "They can only be of value when they give real facts; Napoleon told lies, it is said." I: "He was a play actor, and that is why I cannot stand him, a hollow person." R.: "When one thinks that our courts are nothing but imitations of the court of Louis XIV, which meant something in France in his day, and now all these little Napoleons can think of is to surround themselves with the same hocus-pocus! No nobler ambitions, in art only what is most vulgar; and for that they spend all their money, yes, even spill blood."
"One cannot be angry with the poor German people; they have shed their blood, have gone through thick and thin, but one can be angry with its princes, who have so shamefully let it go to seed."
An article in the A.A.Z. "from Rome" interests us very much. All I say is: "Writing articles makes people untruthful; the way the author speaks of Pius IX is entirely different from the way he would speak of him in conversation. He ennobles him, even though he cannot avoid mentioning the worthlessness of his plans and the cruelty of his methods. In the same way you had to idealize Kings Max and Ludwig in your Art and Politics." "You are right," says R., "they are false images; the present time does not belong to us, one should not attempt to describe it."
In the late evening telegrams; Marie Muchanoff asking for Semper's address. "How will Siegfried feel when he one day sees the 3rd act and learns that I wrote this scene just as he was being born?" [Placed beside this page is a sheet of musical notation paper written in R.'s hand, containing on two lines the excerpt "Heil dem Tage..."]