Friday, May 24:
Farewell to our festival! The theater is pulled down, the costumes returned to the festival theater, a little section of our lives concluded. “Remember it,” R. tells the children. Then we talked a lot about the theater in general: in the 16th century it worked excellently well to have Greeks and Romans played in the contemporary costumes of those days, and it was still possible even in the 18th century, but just imagine playing Hamlet or Lear in our present-day clothing, with uniforms and redingotes! One need say no more.
The repressive laws against the socialists, now being put forward by the government on Bismarck’s special recommendation, appear to be very childish and unimaginative, the idea of making special laws for a special category of people! In the evening R. brings up the whole subject of Hülsen’s attitude toward him, which shows that it is only by dint of circumstance that anything has ever been achieved in Berlin; and it is still the same: if the Ring is to be performed there, it will be due solely to pressure. No reading in the evening. Before supper R. expressed delight in the garden, the house, gazing from his salon upon the fine, luxuriant greenery, a lovely sight.
Saturday, May 25:
R. did not have a very good night, but he is in good spirits, and he works out his last penciled sketches in ink.
In the afternoon he reads to me the very spirited pages from Renan’s Antichrist on the Jews; he is referring solely to the Jews who have remained Jewish and, says R., “quite overlooks the main point that Jews can never really become anything else.”
The Reichstag has thrown out the government’s bill, Bennigsen is reported to have spoken sensibly, but without getting to the heart of the matter, he was close to it, says R., when he spoke about our school, but then he did not do it, and nor did anyone else. More applications for membership in the Society of Patrons. Unpleasantnesses with the publishers. Continued reading Kenilworth; the crude way in which the draught is offered to the heroine vexes “the artist” in R.