Friday, February 15:
R. is somewhat run down; he suffers with me, and we resolve to take no notice of anything, but just to concentrate on our happiness. He is reading Lichtenberg with much enjoyment; his deeper philosophical nature and education make him far superior to the French moralists. At lunch R. relates to us his dream about a performance of Die Meistersinger which was very bad - almost all the members of the orchestra left, and it was more spoken than sung.
In the afternoon he goes for a little walk, in the evening W. Scott. Morton's rescue seems to us a little too noble, but afterward R. says the humane purpose of these works is to show how, amid all the terrible happenings, the better side of the individual characters triumphs. If just the horrors, such as this meeting of the Covenanters, were described, it would be unbearable. I do the reading, since my eyes are somewhat better, and R. says I read the story in a tone of regret at all these terrible happenings. The confusion in the insurgents' camp, the sense of panic, remind R. of the Dresden rebellion, the episode in Freiberg, and how one can be deceived by an apparent victory into telling oneself that, when it is all over, a new world will begin.
Saturday, February 16:
R. asks me whether I am cheerful, for only then does his ideal world exist for him, only then can he work. This helps to dispel all the clouds; I see my sad thoughts dispersing like patches of fog, and though weariness remains, it is of a gentle nature. R. is working! He is delighted with the F he has given Klingsor at the start, and he also shows me the surging movement he has placed beneath Klingsor's somber and mysterious melody.
I go out to attend to purchases for R.'s birthday. He comes to meet me with friend Gross, and we walk home together in thick fog with Marke and Brange. In the evening W. Scott, whom I read aloud; R. says it seems as if Lichtenberg must have based all his definitions of a good novelist on W. Scott. How splendid the conversation between Claverhouse and Morton! The things, however, are unfortunately always rather trivial.
Before we begin our reading we hear issuing from the salon the beginning of the Holy Grail March - Loldi is playing it and adding a kind of upper voice to it; this pleases R. very much, and it is truly very moving - "the best testimony to my work," says R.
Some ridiculous newspaper reports, such as the engagement of Glatz in Paris for 40,000 francs. Then a Prussian deputy who declared in a public debate that such a law could not be made ex ungue leonem [from the lion's claws] - what he meant to say was "off the cuff." Then a report that for the approaching wedding Eckert's new torch dance would be made up of themes from Die Meistersinger, particularly "Am stillen Herd." One of our friends read us the article on Parsifal, which says W. cannot be reproached for not having remained loyal to the legend. We inquire which legend is meant. Much nonsense.