Saturday, October 27:
R. did not sleep very well, but he works. At lunch he tells us that the ugly distortion of his advocacy of the viola caused him to write to the editor of the Augsburger Abendzeitung, telling him not to publish it.
In the evening he writes to Councilor Dufflipp, asking when Siegfried would be produced in Munich, since he would not be able to withhold it from the other theaters. Then to Herr Fritzsch about the publication of the Bayreuther Blätter.
Around midday he played me what he had so far worked out “in ink”; unimagined currents of sublimity flow through my soul and soothe away all sorrow and suffering!
In the evening he goes through the first act of Der Holländer with Herr Seidl. From Der Holländer to Parsifal - how long the path, and yet how similar the character! Following the music, R. talks about the influence of the “cosmos,” the outside world, on characters who, though basically good, do not perhaps possess the strength to resist it, and who then become quite exceptionally bad, indeed perverse. “Nothing from the outside world is of benefit to such characters!” As we are saying good night, R. says to me, “We will understand each other till we die!”