Saturday, December 14:
R. slept well, though he woke very early. Toward noon he complains of tightness in his chest ("I have a mouse scurrying about in my heart, lungs, and liver," he says at lunch; though he means it as a joke, it gnaws at my heart). He went out for a walk in the palace gardens; it is very cold - is this advisable?
He has done some work on his Retrospect and says that, though only creative work can satisfy him, nevertheless he finds pleasure in the artistic form which can be given to a descriptive account such as this. This is why he is working on it slowly, he adds; he will neither complain nor accuse, nor will he use any bitter expressions.
When we meet again, he returning from Angermann's, where he had an appointment with friend W., and I from making a few odd purchases, such divine words escape his lips that I do not dare write them down. And even if I did dare write the words, how could I convey the soul behind them which turned them to searing flame in my heart? ... I hardly dare even think of it, and yet cannot stop thinking of it - oh, thou earthly bliss of love, so immense, so timid, I can only cherish thee and, concealing thy treasures in the depths of my soul, appear to forget thee!
In the evening the W.'s come, and R. tells me his young friend told him that his family had settled in Bayreuth 200 years ago (a Frl. Ruckdeschel was mentioned who had written the funeral ode for a Wolzogen; R. says one still finds these genuine old German names in the small towns, and remarks laughingly that this poetess must certainly have been an ancestress of the present schoolmaster Ruckdeschel - the family had a pedantic streak). R. says he spoke appreciatively of Wolzogen and how retiring he is, the way in which, looking neither to right nor to left, he has retired from the world to subordinate himself to a single person.
He also tells me, "W. and I decided that Schopenhauer and Goethe were quite right about melody, and, however absurd Goethe's desire to see his Helena set to music by Rossini might seem, his instinct had been right to a certain extent." This all arose in connection with an article by friend Pohl in which Schumann is mentioned. With regard to him, R. says: "As if a genius says to himself, 'This is the direction I shall take, this is what I mean to do!' It's inspiration he needs, melodies. In Schumann there is not a single melody, and that's why I place Schubert so high above him." He then talks once more of the great impression Turgenev's novel made on him, and also of his Retrospect: he is vexed at feeling shy now about mentioning the Jews, "just out of consideration for three or four of them," and then, in his usual manner of changing rapidly from annoyance to joking, he exclaims, "Davidsohn gave me a cigar holder!"
In the afternoon he had already mentioned the delight he gets from working out his article, his delight in form, and he goes on about it in the evening. During the afternoon he was very preoccupied (I spoke a certain name, and he asked me for the name of Count Magnis, whom he is mentioning in his article; it had nothing to do with what I had said), and I begged him urgently not to do any work. He enjoyed it, he replied. In the morning he told me that by the end of the year he would have reached Parsifal's anointment, and then the rest would follow. When I tell him I am looking forward to Titurel's funeral, he says, "That is already finished - as good as finished." Before that he said, "I shall still one day write my mourning music for the fallen, and its motto will be 'My captain, I am dying for Germany.'" (Words spoken by a dying soldier in 1870.) Over coffee discussed whether we might ask the King to replace Perfall with someone like Prince Liechtenstein. Final resolve: always to let things go the way they want to go - and go bad in the process.
To conclude the evening he takes out Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues and plays several of them. "That is music," he exclaims after one of the preludes, "music eo ipso." - "He is totally unique," he exclaims after another, "and what accents it has! He knew all about those, though there are no markings, no sforzati." R. considers the 48 Preludes and Fugues to be the quintessence of Bach. When we are lying beside each other in bed, I whisper the words "Oh, sink down, night of love!" R.: "Nobody has ever commented on my identifying the highest enjoyment of love with obliviousness of the world." Here there is oblivion, and the world is abolished.