Monday, September 23:
R. had a good night and is pleased with the telegrams from Leipzig. [Attached are two telegrams, from Seidl and Neumann, describing the enthusiastic reception of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, and also a newspaper clipping containing a letter from R. W. to Neumann. See notes.] He then works, and he looks so well, he is also full of joy, spreading good cheer around. It is my great triumph and inner rejoicing that this splendid spirit feels so unconstrained, pouring its blessings over us without stint!
When we are eating Karlsbad wafers at lunch, R. says, “This is the sort of thing my Knights of the Grail will get. I can’t give them bread and butter, or they will start digging in and not want to leave.” Yesterday, complaining of the difficulties Kundry is causing him, he exclaimed humorously, “And there are still the others to come, with their lances — oh, it’s horrible!” In the afternoon he goes for a walk in beautiful sunshine. “Where have I been?” he says on his return. “At Mime’s place.” By this he means in Angermann’s vaults, looked after by his brother. He says that before his beer he asked for some bread and sat down under the trees, a kitten came up to him and held its tail high up in the air for joy when he gave it some bread; he had enjoyed a few moments of great contentment and could see me sitting there with the children.
After telling me this, he comes to his Parsifal and says: “Oh, I hate the thought of all those costumes and grease paint! When I think that characters like Kundry will now have to be dressed up, those dreadful artists’ balls immediately spring into my mind. Having created the invisible orchestra, I now feel like inventing the invisible theater! And the inaudible orchestra,” he adds, concluding his dismal reflections in humorous vein. He would like to put things off for one more year, he said this morning after his work, for there is no escaping a production. In the evening Herr Lipiner, who involves R. in a discussion about socialism; R. stresses that the power of this movement can only lie in destruction, constructive ideas are always childish, and everything always comes back to human beings as they are and always have been. All the same one must go on working without hope — he himself is an example of that with his Parsifal. To expect much, he says, from tobacco monopolies and other organizations of that sort is foolish, he would be thankful if there were still enough strength left in our society to destroy what exists, but one could see from the Commune in Paris how pitifully and with what effort this process of destruction is accomplished; and even then one could not talk about art, a period of complete barbarism would have to follow, and he would willingly sacrifice both himself and his works for it; but only a tremendous sense of purpose and fanaticism would achieve anything, all else is just fooling around; and besides, people always forget the farmer, the peasant, who is conservative by nature. He speaks of these things with great warmth and excitement, rejecting everything that is petty, or too optimistic.