Friday, July 19:
R. did not have a very good night, something upset his stomach. He wanders out onto the balcony, contemplates the stars. He sleeps soundly from 3 to 7 o’clock. At lunch he expresses satisfaction with his article.
After coffee, when we part, he to take his afternoon rest, we hear sounds of Das Rheingold being played by the military band. I: “What happiness to hear these sounds, if only in this form!” “They are very heathen sounds, as direct as Nature, no sensibility, no hypocrisy in them.” I: “Yes, it was religion which introduced hypocrisy.” He: “Say, rather, the -isms, Catholicism, Judaism, etc.”
We go our separate ways: “My familiar spirit, known to me long before my life began,” he says to me; I am filled with a nameless feeling, a desire to live only in him, to have no cares, no feelings apart from him: it is an overwhelming yearning to be worthy of him, and indescribable grief at not being that — nothing, nothing stirring within me but this single feeling! ...
He reads Strauss’s Life of Jesus and finds it on the whole better than he expected, except that “by God they always mean the Jewish creator of the world, and do not admit that here it is a manifestation of the divine principle.”
We drive to the Eremitage with our friends the Glasenapps and the Wolzogens, after I have made some arrangements; after a long walk along the river Main we come to the lower basin. “Wagnerian luck” holds, the sun shines through for the first time and then stays loyal to us by setting beautifully; a table has been set for us under the trees lining the big lawn, and beautiful flowers decorate it, a spirit of gaiety, the lovely artistic setting pleases us, and we are glad that we have been permitted to eat our meal here, rather than in the restaurant garden.
R. looks well, his dear countenance is full of vitality, he talks about the Greek theater, saying that in art everything must start out from a convention. Tieck’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was very good, he says, a lively intelligence always makes a good impression. He believes that in his own theater he did more or less the right thing, given the present cultural conditions. Reminiscences of Moscow — when R. refused a second concert, the members of the orchestra asked if they might at least have a rehearsal.
Very cheerful journey home, the children following behind in a one-horse carriage. Then R. says goodbye to the Glasenapps. We remain a few more moments together, he and I, he is so kind, satisfied with everything, says it all went off successfully. To the G.’s he says, “You see, things are now going well with me.”