Saturday, October 26:
Again a bad night for R. He got up at 2 o’clock and read Lecky. When I am unable to hide my concern he comforts me, saying he is really all right: “Though if I were alone or had a méchante wife, I should not be all right.” Yesterday he suddenly quoted “A wonder must it be when two souls love” and, recalling the curious previous behavior of certain people, said, “And when it happens, they look away.” Recently, when he read the letters, he said that people had actually sinned against him, having realized how much he could bear.
At lunch he looks worn out, he tells me he always literally experiences the moods which he is composing! In Prussia they are now confiscating newspapers, R., indignant, says, “Forbid is all they can do, they never think of anything else.” And more about Luther: “He is a link in the great chain.” In the afternoon he goes to see Herr Gross with the accounts from Vienna. At supper he is looking quite well again! He says that in the Berlin newspapers Herr von Hülsen is again dishing up the old fairy tales about Die Walküre. R. then asks us what we would like to hear, and I ask for Tannhäuser; he plays us (Lusch, Boni, and me) the finale of the second act and the beginning of the third, up to the appearance of Tannhäuser, and we weep, the children and I - those hot, blissful tears whose falling signals a liberation! R. jokes about our emotion, but I tell him this work will never be surpassed. He says of Wolfram that he is a truly German character, “Italians and Frenchmen have too much chaleur de coeur,” he adds with a laugh. Today it seems to me particularly beautiful, the way in which Wolfram’s noble, gentle male feelings are transformed into a symbol, as it were, through his greeting to the evening star.
R. is glad that he shortened the Prelude: “That was foolish, all that recitative.” Then he says he can imagine how bored a modern audience, “the Jews,” would be with “Elisabeth’s Prayer.” He recalls Mitterwurzer with great appreciation, I recall and tell the children about the occasion 22 years ago when I saw this work for the first time. Now I am delighted and touched by the children’s emotion, and I send a message of remembrance to a grave, for Blandine was with me at that performance. When I say to R. that, now that Herr J[ager] and Frau Materna are in Vienna, they could perform Tristan und Isolde, R. says, “It would give me no pleasure - let it rest till my Garrick comes along.”