Thursday, November 14:
R. had a good night and, after a joyful embrace following a conversation about all kinds of things, we go off to our work. His lasts long, and we eat rather late.
After lunch he goes to the piano to play to me Parsifal’s arrival, noble and melancholy: “This is only approximate, these are just more or less ink blots,” he observes.
We talk about our position (in a business sense), and R. decides on 1880 as the year for performance: “Either I stick to that year and am then completely free after the performance — for if anything crops up it will be behind my back — or I put off the performance, pay off the deficit to the King out of my income, and give the patrons their money back. What I want now is to complete the composition, without thinking of either performance or nonperformance.”
Snow flurries prevent R.’s going out of doors, he works during the afternoon as well and plays to us (the W.’s are present) the prelude to the third act, now written out in ink. Friend W. calls it seeking the Grail, protecting the spear; I am astonished how R. found it possible to present with such concision a motive which is clearly designed for expansion; just the core of the idea, but this done with such intensity that one has the feeling of being able to develop it oneself.
Then he tells us that during the afternoon he reread Shakespeare in English and felt an utter repugnance for the English language — he would never succeed in learning it. In vindication I point out the advantages of Shakespeare in English, vividness and precision, whereas in German it is all nobler, more elegant, even more poetic; I give the witches’ scene as an example. R. agrees with me, and we go through Macbeth, in English and German; but how swiftly is all linguistic curiosity dispersed by the strength of its impact! R. says one must always be able to see what is going on, how facial expressions change, the person becoming different through his impressions. We also speak of the great artistry in letting the witches start the play and then reappear; R. says, “One then wonders, not who they are, but what they will say.”
Later we come again to speak of the fact that the greatest of poets was obliged to write in such a language; also that Goethe made use of Latin-French words for purposes of irony, which is splendid, but not indicative of a harmonious culture. “Only Luther was German,” R. says, and comes back to this unique man, his influence, his work, and his concern for the people; it is all very well now, he says, to criticize the catechism. Such words as “reputation” (Cassio: I have lost my reputation) — how abstract and conventional, how much finer is “Ruf”! That is no obstacle, of course, to a genius, but it is to culture.
Lecky also leads R. to the subject of the peculiar bigotry of the English, the way in which certain evils cannot be cured because no one is permitted to talk about them by name. Much, much more about cultural matters, always returning to the conclusion that the only true art these days is music. We also talk about the Jews. R. assumes that the present financial calamity in England is also the work of the Israelites (Beaconsfield). It should not be presumed, he says, that these people, who are so separated from us by their religion, have any right to make our laws: “But why blame the Jews? It is we who lack all feeling for our own identity, all sense of honor.”