Saturday, March 30:
Again R. had to get out of bed around four o’clock and had a disturbed night. Thinking of his overture, he says: “How this idea of fairies and fairyland introduces superficiality into one’s imagination! The glittering ballet costumes and the splendor, which can only be taken from real life, produce nothing worthwhile. What is the origin of it?” I ask whether it might not perhaps be a remnant of the houris.
Discussion about Fidi, whether he is not too sensitive. R. feels this need be no obstacle to energy of character. “Must he be a hooligan?” People who possess only energy, without this sensitivity, are sinister, inhibited characters, he says. The Greek lyric poets remind him of Nietzsche’s “extraordinary” outpourings about these very poems. Yesterday evening he could clearly recall Kügelgen, who drew a portrait of Sch. in his youth, his murder and the name of the murderer and his accomplices: “How strong these youthful impressions on one’s memory are!”
We also spoke yesterday evening about the various methods of execution. Of beheading, he said he had thought how brutal, how barbaric it was suddenly to cut off the head of a woman like Mary Stuart; here, too, the Greeks had discovered a better way with their cup of hemlock. He is satisfied with his work, yet feels oppressed; we go for a walk together, taking the two dogs, warm sunshine. R. thinks of Ajax, how he carried Patroclus from the battlefield on his sturdy shoulders. I suggest that we read the Iliad, and he says, “Yes, that is something completely different from Dante, and we have a very good translation.” On our return home he says to me, “You will be astonished to see how Parsifal’s theme appears in the third act, to describe the long journey he has made, for that is necessary.”
In the evening he writes to the King and mentions the following notice in the Musikalische Zeitung. R. says to the King that people never learn, for the same director who earns good money with R.’s operas in his theater allows such lectures to be given by Riehl in the music school. In the evening: the Die Feen Overture and the lovely Andante from his symphony. The Overture does not please R.; he finds it too dramatic and says it is just well orchestrated. But he is very happy with the Andante, which he says has character and melody; thoughts of Mendelssohn’s malice in connection with it. When we are alone, R. and I play the first half of the Idyll as a piano duet, then to rest.
R. mentions the eos krokopeplos, eos rhododaktylos [dawn’s saffron mantle, dawn’s rosy fingers] in the springtime; going off to his afternoon rest, he embraced me and said: “Lord, when I sit there in the mornings and work and know that you do not begrudge me rest and comfort, I find it hard to believe that I could be doing something else, writing an article or whatever. It needs a complete reversal of one’s nature to do it. But it is probably a good thing that one does.”
And so now this lovely day comes to an end; when I showed delight in the countryside on our walk, R. said, “You are so modest in your desires!” Ah, I wish for nothing, nothing but that he should feel well, everything, everything I find right and good if it helps him. He urged himself to walk erect, saying one is always inclined to stoop, particularly when reflecting on something.