Wednesday, January 31:
R. received a letter from Herr Unger, who says that probably he will now have to accept an engagement in Nürnberg! ... The upkeep of the theater is also costing a lot.
Our good Dean Dittmar died this morning, my first and my best friend here! I do not tell R. the news at once. He is fairly well and in good spirits: “Once more you hover near me, forms and faces!” He recalls that it is 15 years since he last wrote a new text, Die Meistersinger in Paris; at that time there had been nothing to keep him alive but the creative urge, now it is I and the children who are keeping this creative urge alive. He tells me he is trying to turn the morning into the productive continuation of the dream; and that is why I do not tell him the dismal news until later.
The task of revising my books keeps me from giving in to my thoughts. In the evening we read Thucydides; the blockade of Pylos brings us Aristophanes’s The Knights, a powerful diversion, complete forgetfulness, and an ideal world of cheerfulness. Siegfried is touching in his sympathy for me.