Thursday, October 24:
R. had a good night, and at 5:30, when he wakes up, he tells me that he has already been composing in his thoughts. At breakfast he comes back to Luther’s final assessment of things and the present world’s assessment of him: “How tragic and sublime it is!” Later he says jokingly that when, in the rarest of circumstances, the world brings forth a great man, it has always looked upon him with astonishment, just as Rausch, our gardener, looks at his seeds when they come up! But before that he mentioned how the princes accepted Luther’s teachings in order to further their own interests, how the peasants had distorted them, how he had to admit that for such people the Pope was just about right, and how he himself is now judged. “And the world imagines it learns something from its great men!” (It was to this he linked his joke.) “And Christ, too, although on his cross he stands high above all such things - he would surely have thought, when he saw his work, ‘The Roman Imperator is just about right for all of you.’ And now these awful consistorial councilors as Luther’s successors!” Even the world figures who seemed the best were bad - Marcus Aurelius, for example, who persecuted the Christians most of all (this he said yesterday, talking about the princes). To all of this he linked our wish not to stage Parsifal. When I support him in this, he says, “You and I, we set our sights on the highest heights,” which makes us laugh heartily - as always, even the most melancholy of observations cannot spoil our joy in being together!
We have our afternoon coffee in my room, R. talks about the sad strains he will now have to compose; they must not contain a single ray of light, he says, for that could lead one far astray. Parsifal’s sad wanderings, which must lead up to the situation on Monsalvat. Telegram saying that Herr Jager has been engaged for Siegfried in Vienna, which pleases R. In the afternoon, toward evening, he presents me with the manuscript of Opera and Drama! And also seven letters to Uhlig, sent to him by Elsa Uhlig with a very nice accompanying note. We read the letters in the evening, talk about many past events, and then he plays to me some of the gloomy strains, and we end the day happy and uplifted.