Saturday, August 11:
Expecting the arrival of my father, he cables that he will not come until tomorrow. Melancholy return home. Then many affectionate outpourings and finally the revelation of “Nehmet hin mein Blut” [“Take ye my blood”]. R. tells me he wrote it down shortly before my return, with his hat and coat on, just as he was about to go out to meet me.
He has had to alter the words to fit it, he says; this scene of Holy Communion will be the main scene, the core of the whole work. With the “Prize Song” in Die Meistersinger, too, the melody came first, and he had adapted the words to it. He had already told me yesterday that one must beware of having to extend a melody for the sake of the words. Now today the chief passage (“Nehmet hin mein Blut um unsrer Liebe willen, nehmet hin meinen Leib und gedenket mein ewiglich”) is there complete, in all its mildness, suffering, simplicity, and exaltation. “Amfortas’s sufferings are contained in it,” R. says to me.
Its impression on me is overwhelming, and I am incapable of putting my mind to anything. A long time after this R. reads me the first scenes of Hamlet, which one thinks one knows by heart and yet never knows. R. agrees with me when I remark that H.’s outburst about the reveling occurs when he is in a state of great agitation, when one talks only in order to speak, not to say anything in particular. The cold night, gruesome expectation, excite in H. this urge to work himself into a passion; and from a dramatic point of view, too, nothing could be more felicitous than this diversion of attention from the expected apparition, allowing it to make its impact suddenly. As always in Shakespeare, the height of artistry coincides with the waywardness of real life.