Tuesday, June 4:
R. again had a very bad night; we went to bed at eleven thirty, he had to get up first at one thirty and then again at four thirty, when he went downstairs to walk around the house; toward 6 o'clock he comes back to me, and despite the torments which caused his restlessness, he makes a pleasant reply to my greeting, and soon I hear him laughing loudly over our friend Hagen, who has suddenly written to friend W. from Lucerne, saying that a terrible intrigue is being woven against him by his "four-dimensional" enemies. Oddly enough, two unknown people recently inquired by postcard where Herr v. Hagen was now living.
Cheerful breakfast, with memories of Schopenhauer's letters. R. says: "I appear quite early on. Kossak turned him against me by applying his philosophy against my principles, and on top of that, my democratic outlook." I: "And the dedication to Feuerbach." R.: "That never meant anything to me, or led me astray." I discover a resemblance between Schopenhauer and Beethoven. "Yes," says R., "the belief in himself, the sharpness."
At lunch on Sunday R. again praised La Juive highly; then he spoke about Schumann and said, "No dedicated artist or poet goes mad, and it is no credit to Kleist that he committed suicide, for it is precisely this which marks out the artist, that through all torments he retains the serene capacity to observe." This morning R. says, "No good star is watching over Bismarck's creation." We try to remember how the convocation of princes presided over by the Emperor of Austria came about, and we ask ourselves whether it had been right for Prussia to refuse the invitation and then immediately afterward to fall upon Denmark, along with Austria.
At lunch we at last forget the dismal subject, we talk about Schopenhauer's letters, and R. emphasizes the value to Schopenhauer of his little fortune: "Not to have to work for money! I work for money." I: "Oh, no!" R.: "No, I don't work for money, but I suffer for it." He rests a little, and then we go for a walk in the palace gardens; the weather is close; as we are passing a tree, a woodpecker leaves its place and flies to one side: "Here come those people," says R., speaking for the bird, "I mustn't let them see there's something good here." And, speaking for other birds who do not allow themselves to be disturbed by us: "Oh, it's them, not him." R. goes to change, I write to friend Kindworth, who has touched me very much with his memories of Tribschen. (This morning I read in my diary the pages R. wrote for me while I was bringing Siegfried into the world! Deep emotion, tears run down my cheeks in my sweet melancholy.) R. sends for me: "I'm about to start."
The scene between Parsifal and Kundry, up to the cry of the former: "Amfortas!" Indescribably moving! "A moment of daemonic absorption," R. calls the bars which accompany Kundry's kiss and in which the fatal motive of love's longing, creeping like poison through the blood, makes a shattering effect. This, along with the tenderly sorrowful sounds of Herzeleide, the majestic way in which Kundry proclaims her liberation from the pressure of remorse, all these things, so richly and variously laid out, so ravishing and so painful, form a whole of unfathomable beauty and nobility. Oh, the wonderful man! R. sees a resemblance between Wotan and Kundry: both long for salvation and both rebel against it, Kundry in the scene with P., Wotan with Siegfried.
The sublime impression is soon scattered to the winds by the news from the outside world. The Emperor lies in a fever from his wounds, the would-be murderer, incidentally a Protestant, so all the suspicions were wrong, has died, also the coachman, the innkeeper mutilated, all horribly cruel. [Inserted between the pages is a newspaper clipping dated June recording the details mentioned above.] We take refuge in reading and gradually cheer ourselves up with Schopenhauer's letters, which are magnificent! To end with, R. plays the joyful, popular tune from Beethoven's Battle of Vittoria and exclaims, "This is folk art, a superb thing!"