Thursday, October 17:
R. slept well, and after our morning conversation, which concerns Lecky, Mozart, and the German Reich, he leaves me with the words, echoing Frederick the Great, “Now I am going to collect fuyards [refugees].” He means all the musical ideas which he has hastily written down; he told me yesterday that most of all he would like to write some symphonies, gay and cheerful works in which he would not venture at all far, but he feels a real need to give vent to this side of himself.
He is also thinking of revising Senta's ballade, the beginning of which he finds is quite properly like a folk song, but not characteristic of Der Holländer. Over our after-lunch coffee he sings to me a theme with words: “Dem Morgen nach der Weihnacht” [“On the morning after Christmas”]. I also heard sounds in the morning which I could imagine to be the beginning of the Prelude.
Went out with the children; R. fetches me from the Wolzogens. He then writes a few words to Herr Lipiner, asking him first of all to discuss the work pragmatically and then, when he has put his readers in the requisite mood, to bring in his philosophical ideas. He also writes to Herr Tappert, inviting him to write for the Blätter.
In the evening R. reads to me and the two elder girls “Death in Paris,” which I find deeply moving, for after all it is a part of R.'s own nature, described by him. Very profound, indeed bitter feelings about my unworthiness, the nearer I come to grasping his character and my happiness. When the children have left, R. remarks that the conception of art as we understand it is in fact a completely new one, never known before. I: “It was you who put forward this definition; before you it was only Schiller who had any inkling of the idea of an artist as a high priest.” “And that is why they can't stand him, either,” says R.
Then he says that, should one wish to name anything that shows the complete detachment of music, its power, of which up till now nobody has had the slightest idea, then he would cite the fugato in the first movement of the 9th Symphony. We also talked of Schopenhauer's wonderful definition of music and heaven knows what else in the joyful excitement of being alone together!