Friday, August 20:
Letter from Judith, full of enthusiasm. I reply and ask her to use the occasion of Das Rheingold to make known the reasons why R. is staying away from Munich.
In the afternoon R.’s sister Frau Avenarius arrives; he has not seen her for 21 years. When I express my pleasure for R.’s sake and ask him whether she has shown him love, he says with a smile, “We don’t need love, we only need sincerity.”
In the evening I read Herwegh’s foreword to the translation of King Lear, and R. deplores the facetious tone which is nowadays to be found everywhere, to which even Semper, with all his magnificent thoughts, is obliged to submit under the circumstances, a lecture to a mixed public in Zurich about matters which would require a whole book.
R. also does not like talk about Menschtum [“mankind”], and altogether it is a great pity that Semper is now writing instead of building.