Monday, October 25:
R. comes to breakfast with a letter from the King. All the old expressions of love and rapture, and with them a plea for pardon concerning his behavior over Das Rheingold (“my longing was too great”). Then we read in the Signale that Die Walküre is being prepared in the Munich Court theater; so much for the letter: it really is terrible!
But we agree that R. is in fact living on his Nibelungen, he owes his existence to them, and so one really ought to thank God that a being such as the King has such curious fads in his head and truly wants to see and have the things, though indeed without being able to appreciate their sublimities.
R. says: “He cannot kill the work, I am the only one who can kill it, by breaking with him and not completing it. The fact that he is ruining things now will not detract from the impression when they are one day presented in the way I want, for people still have me to thank for Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. This great presentation does, however, depend in a general sense on cultural conditions, and if these are not achieved, not even the most consummate performances in Munich would be of any avail. All this is in the hands of Fate. But to reply to all the King’s enthusiastic assurances is difficult.”
When I ask him whether he intends to go to Vienna for the production of Die Meistersinger he says no: “It is better thus; when I intervene in anything, some demonic urge always arises and puts things in jeopardy. In this way it will simply be a bad theatrical performance, which will pass, as all bad things pass.”
Put away the summer things and brought out the winter things; the cold is already with us, and children’s coughs, too, unfortunately.
In the afternoon the student for geology. R. comes home with letters: (1) Hallwachs writes that our case might well take six months. (2) Richter, who announces that he has been invited to Brussels to conduct Lohengrin. (3) Schuré, who simply addresses us as a good and loyal friend.
I said to R. that it would be a good thing if our Mendès’s friends could learn something from Schuré in this regard. “Unfortunately,” says R., “no development is possible in French people, there is at best only an inspired intuition; for the whole nation has virtually collapsed under the rule of the Jesuits, and their upbringing deprives them of all independent spirit.”
He then considers how Protestantism could by itself have saved France, and how the terrible disciplined schooling at all levels can only breed cynicism. In the evening he discusses with me the question of human progress, which has not changed in character; its essence remains the same. What we have lost in productivity, thereby giving our age the appearance of falling into decadence, is made up for by a wider distribution of culture. It is true that in this distribution art is losing a very great deal, but who can measure how gradually the level is rising? Music has now taken the place of the Renaissance arts.
In the evening D. Quixote; unfortunately the devil’s masquerade, which has little appeal for us, since we find its purport and the pedantic manner of conveying it downright embarrassing.