Saturday, June 22:
R. slept well, he goes walking in the palace gardens with the children; Loldi, holding Marke on the lead, is suddenly dragged away when he catches sight of a cat, R. laughingly tells me at breakfast; then he recalls Catulle Mendès, wishes he could make up for not having received him, also recompense Belloni and Giacomelli for their services to him. “Oh, what useless years those were! A waste of my energies. I could have done my work in Zurich until the summons came from the King.” I: “It’s a terrible thing to say, but I can scarcely regret it, for perhaps we might not then have found each other.” R.: “Oh, yes, we would have come together, and I would have run away with you, to Greece or somewhere.”
Returning to this in the afternoon, I tell him those years had been a sort of labyrinth, into which, like Parsifal, he had been lured by an evil curse, but inwardly he had never lost his way, he had preserved his ideals pure and intact, as P. had his lance. “I have remained true to my law,” he answers, referring to the Bhagavad-Gita. In the course of the conversation he also said, “One must assume that Kundry’s curse loses its power when she awakes, and this awakening attracts Parsifal, all kinds of mysterious relationships like that.” To which I: “The wicked world was the Kundry’s curse which lured you into the labyrinth.” R. decides on a drive to Berneck, in order to satisfy his longing to follow the path beside the brook to its end. He rests with the Bhagavad-Gita; I have all sorts of things to attend to, the house, the children, reports from W. and Feustel (the bank again wants a guarantor). At lunch R. relates the curious dream with which he awoke from the “twilight” of his morning sleep: he was waiting in the salon for the carriage he had ordered when suddenly a hearse appeared before the door from the salon into the garden. “Why this? It is much too early!” he exclaimed, and woke up. The shape and color of the carriage for our outing was responsible for this dream, which he was hesitant at first to impart to me. I tell R. of the joy I felt in discussing the 2nd act of Parsifal with friend Wolzogen, how after Kundry’s overwhelming “Ich will nicht” [“I will not”] she is overcome by the will to live, and this seemingly strong “will not” comes to nothing; her laughter when Parsifal first appears, then the knights, and Klingsor, now firmly master of the situation, giving voice to the triumphant joy of dominion as he gazes on P.! As we ascend the hill, he says, “I should like to start composing again, since it gives you so much joy, I should like to go on working.” Then he sings a succession of endings to themes from Parsifal, as, for instance, to the scene between Klings. and Kund. I: “For concert use, I suppose?!” While, to spare the horses, we are walking up to the crest of the hill, R. quotes Faust: “Had I the strength of but two horses—then she will not be mine, without a question mark.” A threatening thunderstorm passes over, chased away by the Wagner luck, a W. sun shines down on us. In the liveliest of spirits, alternating between the noble tones of the Bhagavad-Gita and jokes about all and sundry (“I was born about two of the clock in the afternoon with something of a wet shirt,” he says, misquoting Falstaff, in order to make excuses for drinking a non-cure glass of brandy), imparting happiness through his very presence, enchanting me with his words, he wanders with me along the lovely path beside the brook, as far as the tower and back, amid the scent of those lilacs which so charmed Hans Sachs! (We stick to the name “lilac.”) We have supper in the Molkengarten and then return home (children and friends welcoming us and making us happy). But his foot is hurting him; in a kiss which I press on it in the evening I lay the whole humility of my love and my fervent wish for his recovery.
He talked of Cosimo de’ Medici as compared with Pericles: “Ex humation from the age of decadence, however gifted C. may have been — same relationship as that of Louis XIV to Augustus. The aristocracy has done very little.” And all the splendid things he says end in a declaration of our love. “How glad we are,” he says, “that we discover ever more and more in each other,” and thus we slip into sleep. Oh, children, may my happiness become yours!