Wednesday, February 6:
The contract with Munich has arrived; it will be discussed tomorrow. All sorts of domestic things to occupy me.
R. has had sent to him The Trumpeter of Säkkingen (60th reprinting) and also the symphony by Brahms, which has been performed with tremendous success in Vienna and Leipzig. After reading it through, he says: "One can't really wonder that such things get written; there is nothing in it, but the public cheers! As far as they are concerned, Beethoven and the great poets have lived in vain." R. finds the formlessness of The Trumpeter distasteful, rather like a student, pipe in mouth. The symphony, with all its triviality blown up by orchestral effects, its tremolando theme which might have come from the introduction to a Strauss waltz, we find utterly shocking.
R. has written to our friend Schuré asking him to send some tobacco, and he adds the remark that, if only he had opted for Germany, what could he not say to the Germans, how he could reproach them for their meanness, whereas in France he is nothing! After the Brahms symphony, a chapter of Scott's The Presbyterians. Copies of the Idyll arrive.