Monday, May 20:
Much laughter about the tableau vivant his father Geyer arranged for R.’s mother’s birthday: Councilor Georgi, a stout elderly man, lying on her bed drinking coffee, the children grouped around, as they always did, a female singer dressed as an officer, news from town. I am told that Fidi has caught a cold; my great annoyance over this restores my voice. R. works; but he has resolved not to compose more than four lines at a time, since he finds it very exhausting; I can see that when he comes down to lunch.
A curious newspaper report, inspired by Herr von Hülsen, about the failure of Tristan and Meistersinger, the lack of “drawing power” in the Ring des Nibelungen except for Walküre; all this does not help to raise his spirits. The writer of the piece, who intercedes in R.’s behalf, does this in such a peculiarly Semitic way that R. says to me in the evening: “Oh, if only we could shut out the world entirely! You and I, we are living in a desert.”
The only thing that can restore us is to shake it all off and think only of each other; today R. took me into the palace gardens to see the elderberry blossoms, and, already half asleep, I hear his dear voice exclaiming to me, “You are everything to me.”