Tuesday, August 6:
R. has a slight cold, but he settles down to work and announces joyfully that he has overcome the main difficulty. We walk up and down, then in the salon; when I laughingly reproach him for having compared me with "Jungfer Ziiss" in my conversation with Herr Levi, he says: "Oh, that is my salvation, this ability to convert the most serious of things into nonsense in a flash - it has always kept me from going over the brink. Thus, for example, in the midst of my composing today, I almost wrote down in my composition sketch, 'Now comes Mamsell Kundry.'"
In the afternoon I go through the first act of Parsifal with friend Kl., after which R. plays to me what he wrote today, and has already filled out in ink: it is terribly beautiful! R. says to me, "With Amfortas it is the pain of languishing; here it is the whole strength of vitality which responds to this ecstasy."
R. again goes to swimming school with Fidi but is very dissatisfied with the way he is being taught. A Herr Glagau has sent us a pamphlet about National Liberalism and reaction; R. considers it good, not tied to any particular party. "Things are stirring," he says. A visit from our six friends in the evening; Kl. plays some Chopin, which R. enjoys. Then at last alone together again. When our friend was reluctant to fold his hands for grace at Irmch today, R. reproached him with self-consciousness and spoke splendidly and at length about religion, saying how this trivial cult of atheism is to blame for the loss of reverence and the fact that in religion people now see nothing more than just the Jewish God.