Tuesday, December 18:
R. dreamed that I was embittered, estranged from him. I dreamed of a fight between swans and dogs, in which R., going to the help of Rus, was dragged into the water, but emerged from it at once.
R. works and plays me Kundry’s “withdrawal to the bushes” and the subsequent words of Gurnemanz. It is utterly splendid, and when I show my delight in it to him, he says, “Yes, one must be good to me, then everything is all right.” “Am I worthy of being good to you?” “Yes, beyond all bounds you are, and in you I know what that means, for you are someone who makes an impression.” Laughter. In the afternoon he goes out, and afterward tells me that in the palace gardens he saw a man beating the snow regularly with his stick; he kept out of his way, having no desire to be hit on the head and murdered by a lunatic. We laugh over this fear.
Written across the margin of this whole page: “News of the capitulation of Plevna on very honorable terms for Osman Pasha.” He corrects the “album sonata.”
In the evening the history of the Arabs, then two preludes from Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues, played very movingly by R.; of the one in [illegible], he says: “That gave me my direction. It is incredible how many things in music passed me by without leaving any impression, but that determined me. It is infinite! No one else has ever done anything like it!”
Weber’s birthday!