Wednesday, March 6:
R. and I resume the discussion we began yesterday evening; R. describes [Raphael's] Sistine Madonna as the most consummate work of art, precisely on account of its fine restraint; the very fact that it contains so few figures makes R. feel that as a work of art it is more significant than Titian's Ascension, which all but transgresses the boundaries. The Sistine Madonna stands in the same relationship to the Ascension as the C Minor Symphony (first movement) to the Eroica.
R. is very interested in his symphony, which Seidl is copying out from the orchestral parts; R. says it could have been written by a young composer between the first and second symphonies of Beethoven. But in the evening he is dismayed by the second theme. R. works, I visit our friend, and she joins us again in the evening.
The first scene of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part I, read aloud by R. He is lost in admiration for its greatness and individuality, the immediacy of history in the poet's imagination as displayed in the conference with the Archbishop of York.
Letter from Schwerin: they agree to R.'s terms for Der Ring des Nibelungen, which makes R. remark that Berlin will now be surrounded on all sides, as Plevna was; Hamburg, Schwerin, Brunswick, Leipzig, Vienna, Munich are all doing the Ring. The only curious thing is that Schwerin is not yet including Die Walküre in the contract, a point which R. is having put right by our Wolzogen.