Tuesday, August 27:
R. had a good night and he works; I go to the station to meet our dear friend Malwida von Meysenbug, and her visit is a great joy to us. In the gayest fashion R. teases her about her socialism.
In the evening we go through my father’s Dante Symphony, that is to say, he plays it to us, and, after he has left, R. talks about this highly poetic conception, how beautifully he has avoided all suspicion of mere musical scene-painting, a trap into which Berlioz would certainly have fallen; how beautiful the feeling in the Purgatorio section, one does not know whether it is contrition or hope which does not dare, as it were, to raise its head there; how beautiful the fugato! But there is no public for it now, he adds; education is necessary, to understand it one must have some idea of Dante and also a knowledge of Catholicism. My father’s indescribable modesty about his works touches R. very much. He says with splendid high spirits that he has himself “stolen” so much from the symphonic poems.