Wednesday, January 2:
R. works and makes me happy at lunch with the remark, “I am enjoying my life tremendously, I am immersing myself more and more in my world of spirits, the whole day is taken up with their rhythms and fluctuations,” etc. “I am a lucky man,” he tells me in the evening. Oh, God, oh, heavens, what have I done to deserve the happiness of seeing him so contented? From Count Apponyi a wonderful letter about Parsifal, which Richard calls sublime. A very trying one for me from Hans von Bülow, which I answer at once.
Herr von Wolzogen reads us his circular letter, written in R.’s name to the local Wagner Societies. In the evening the Divina commedia and the 8th Symphony, of whose concluding movement R. says that for him it is the finest thing Beethoven ever produced, a celebration of life and all that it means, divine! To end the day he plays and sings to me Die sündige Welt how overwhelming it is, how incomparably beautiful! What can one possibly say?