Thursday, September 19:
When R. groaned during the night, I stroked and fondled him, so that he awoke gently and then quietly went to sleep again. At breakfast we look at the houses in Riga; he shows me where Robber always lay; gay memories of the Duna bridge and the Schwarzhäupterhaus.
Then Parsifal again: “The way he immediately wants to start converting people,” he says with a laugh, “when he has only just seen the light himself!” Yesterday evening he was pleased with Parsifal as a character, said he had correctly indicated the things which a noble impression in adolescent years produces, overturning the natural instincts; this is the pattern in all the saints: “With the Saviour himself it was predestined, so to speak, in his mother’s womb.”
Over coffee he tells me about the house on Schmiedegasse with windows opening onto the courtyard: “It was there I believed I no longer had a wife.” He recalls compassionately how wretched she had looked. He talks, in the evening, very movingly about the curse of being born without means, then he reads to us from Gfrörer some strange Israelite statements about God.
In the afternoon he goes to work; he shows me the laughter, then I go away, return through the room again, he complains of his bad luck, that just when he wants to wipe his pen he loses it, but he is cheerful and looks so well and splendid that it is a comfort and a pleasure to see; in the evening, when, as today, he lays his hand on the sofa, that dear, splendid hand, and his eyes shine and his dear voice rings out, my heart rejoices! To Malwida, dressed in blue, he says, “You look like your pencil.” Herr Kohler gives us a manuscript!