Friday, December 27:
R. had a good night, and I had the happiness of watching over his sleep and, in my pleasure at doing so, of becoming meditative and forming the only desire within my soul into a prayer. There can be no more vain striving, no worldly sorrow can disturb me, for only love now breathes within me. Merry breakfast with R.; he tells me once again how the rehearsal cured him. He had had some trouble with the Prelude to Parsifal (they had played it at twice the proper speed in Meiningen, because the conductor had not known how to indicate the rhythm of one passage, like Lachner on a previous occasion with the Tannhäuser Overture), but everything had been in order with the Overture.
Departure of Seidl, a good and industrious person. Lunch with the children; R. asks them what they liked best: Parsifal and the Beethoven Andante. R. said yesterday again that he would perhaps amuse himself by orchestrating some things afresh.
In the evening alone with Herr R. (before that R. writes to Herr Forster concerning the engagement of Seidl). Our conversation ends with a very animated description of the evils the Jews have brought on us Germans. R. says that he personally has had some very good friends among the Jews, but their emancipation and equality, granted before we Germans had come to anything, had been ruinous. He considers Germany to be finished. And this worries him, for there were signs to suggest this might happen. The Germans have been exploited and ridiculed by the Jews, and abroad they are hated. So they have become indolent, besotted, wanting to do everything as the Jews do; their faith and loyalty have been undermined. Certainly much of the blame lay with the governments. But it was all ordained by Fate. He, R., has no hope left.
Before that we talked about the influence of impressions on the senses - of music, for instance, on hearing - and, arising out of that, the remark Prof. Haeckel is supposed to have made that R.'s music has changed the hearing of the present generation. R. plays “mich sterben” from Tristan and says that many people were perplexed when they heard this for the first time. Most of them could hear no melody - but if melody were to be grasped through the intellect, then he (R.) was willing to admit that the senses might change accordingly. The body says, “I look after all the functions, but the perceptions I leave to you, the intellect.” R. also tells us of his dream, in which he saw his sister Klara passing by with her husband, and behind them a long line of people, like Banquo’s descendants; it had strangely touched him.