Friday, September 27:
R. had a restless night, the letter to Marsillach was a strain on him. He dreamed of a clarinet which played by itself. But he goes to his work and becomes so cheerful that he sings the “What delight does travel bring” aria from Jean de Paris, then says this is really what Kundry ought to sing, mockingly, when she sets Parsifal out on the wrong path. Saying farewell to Malwida after coffee, he says, “God preserve you, Malwida, you are now emancipated!” But in the afternoon, when I return from a lengthy walk with M., I find him in a bad mood; he is not feeling well and has pains in his chest, and I regret having left the house. He feels disgusted with the world and is particularly vexed with Seidl, who has not written to him; all the same, he writes to Herr Neumann, asking him to engage Seidl. Herr Glatz already cast aside in Vienna, attempt to get Herr Jager taken on there.
In the evening he says we must go to Spain, to Barcelona, Seville, Granada: “I can see the children arriving in Spain,” he says with a laugh. The Fliegende Blätter helps cheer R. up, and at last, toward the end of the evening, he sits down at the piano and plays Tristan, the second act up to the arrival of Marke; he plays it so beautifully, in a way so far transcending the ordinary bounds of beauty, that I feel I am hearing the sounds which will make me blessed in death. “What luxuriating!” says R., adding with a laugh, “Just the thing for Berlin and Niemann.” “This work goes beyond all the others: Götterdämmerung is a tragedy of Fate, but what is the love scene in Die Walküre compared to this obsession with death?” “All this we have experienced,” he said earlier. “Oh, you poor woman! You remember my youthful ballad about the swan who saves the youth who wants to drown himself? You are this swan which caught me and held me.” Immediately after he stopped playing, he wanted to talk about other things, but in my state of deep emotion I could neither hear, understand, nor say anything at all; and so I do not remember what he said, though I know it was something serious.