Thursday, October 10:
Twenty-five years ago today I saw R. for the first time! I put on his table the “litanies” I wrote in memory of that day.
At breakfast, before he finds them, we talk more about Figaro, and how poor and thin Mozart's successors, such as Spontini and Cherubini, are in comparison. The opera buffa form gave full scope to his genius, whereas the opera seria produced stiffness.
At lunchtime he comes to me and says, to my bliss, that when he read my litany he felt quite intoxicated, quite unable either to work or to read; he fell into a sound and gentle sleep from which he rose as if born anew. He reads me a splendid extract from a letter by Seneca about death, quoted by Lecky, and says how much to be preferred are the ideas of the ancient world to those of the church today, whose power is rooted in the fear of death, or rather, of life after death.
We eat alone together in the children's salon and lose ourselves in memories: Blandine, Daniel, the two old governesses, Siegfrieds Tod, Marie Hohenlohe, Princess Carolyne, all of it so melancholy and all so sweetly transfigured by our happiness! When Malwida comes up with the children, R. cries out to her, “We are celebrating our 25th anniversary, our silver wedding!”
Then he goes off for his rest, and I also lie down. He goes for a walk, and when I awake, I see a reflection of the most golden of sunsets! R.'s spirit shines down on me, pouring blessings! He himself comes to greet me before settling down to work, and, to crown this blissful day, Vreneli sends me photographs of Tribschen and the Schweizerhof, and friend Cyriax writes to say he has discovered the Horseshoe Tavern! A 70-year-old house, the only one still standing, in the City of London!
R. is satisfied with his work (Kundry's curse); he eats downstairs with the children and comes up to me with two slices of bread and butter, which he has prepared for me. He wants to talk about the “litany,” asks me whether Malw. knows anything about it; I shake my head. He says, “If I had done something like that, I should have told everyone.”
Then he takes up Hamlet to remind himself of Polonius, and reads the scene with Reynaldo, then all the following scenes up to the players' performance. Oh, could I but describe his expression, the pale, radiant face beneath the noble, arching forehead, recapture the life of melancholy, kindness, humor welling up from within him! Its equal would be seen only in the work he is reading, which hits one like a living experience, in which one is constantly discovering new facets. R. says it is like a criminal case in court, human conduct which one has to decipher: “This is how people are, now learn to understand them.”
He says he no longer wants to talk about Shakespeare. After the reading he goes out onto the balcony of the children's salon, enjoying the evening lit by glorious moonlight, the garden, our home: “What need to seek further? What is a Palazzo Colonna to us? It is all cold, has nothing to tell us.” As we part, I utter my request: that he might also want what alone I wish for! “Things are too good for me,” he exclaims as he gets into bed, then adds with a laugh, “Of course, if it weren't so, I should keep my mouth shut!”