Tuesday, October 1:
Again a bad night for R.; he believes the beer he drinks while working just before supper is the cause, and he frequently determines to give it up. “The house in the morning seems dead to me when not filled with the sounds of your music.” He reads Lecky and tells me some things about the attitude of the Romans toward their slaves. October starts very roughly: “We shall have to give up all thoughts of summer now even of autumn.”
Talking of Haeckel’s theories, R. is led to Kant’s and Laplace’s theories of the origin of the world, and he also speaks about the Indian “breath” an image he much admires, which would form with the ending of the world and is the same thing as what humans understand by desire. Compared with such a myth the whole Jewish mythology is just hack work. “The more I examine history,” he says, “the worse I find it,” meaning this world.
After lunch letters from Leipzig, an excellent account of the performances from friend Seidl. R. asks me to go for a walk with him, he says solitary walks are quite productive, but today he does not wish to meditate. When we reach the entrance to the little terrace on the right of the house which leads through the garden to the railings, R. asks me: “Have you experienced that, that you sometimes see images? Today I saw you, that is to say, just your forehead and eyes; I couldn’t conjure up the lower part, for conscious will is no use in this case, it’s likely to bring you just the face of some blackamoor instead of what you’re looking for. You gazed at me with such a wonderful expression, and then I fell sound asleep.”
I strolled with him through the palace gardens, first talking about Lecky’s book, then I tell him about Plutarch’s life of Lycurgus, which I am reading to the children. Then Tristan, and R. talks again of his need at that time to push himself to the limit musically, since in the Nibelungen the requirements of the drama frequently forced him to restrict the musical expression. We recall the da capo in the extract from Tristan in London: “That was funny,” says R. “The English are dour, but not reserved.” Over our beer we continue talking, and R. tells me he does not feel like working, he wants to come to grips with the book about religious sects, and, as if making excuses to himself, he says, “I shall have completed the first two acts within a year; to compose three acts one after another like that—” I interrupt him: “—is not possible.”
R. decorates my room. During supper recently we talk about gratitude, and R. mentions how intolerable a human being finds it to be grateful, and gives gods as an example, when he is not bound by love. I know that R. perhaps alone among the people I know has always loved to express gratitude and has the greatness not to be afraid of accepting it. Perhaps because inside himself he knows how to repay it with interest.
In the evening all sorts of information about poisons from Herr Kellermann, who is well versed in natural science. R. mentions his mother’s death, serenely transfigured, with a vision of the Redeemer. My brother saw Saints Peter and Paul and said he would prepare our places for us. In the evening, at my request, R. plays the Prelude to Parsifal and the boys’ song, Wein und Brot des letzten Mahles. He speaks of the simplicity of the Prelude: “It is just a few contrasted themes.”