Thursday, January 9:
R. slept well; while I was watching gratefully over his dear sleep, gloomy pictures passed through my mind - oh, Fate, be gracious toward me! R. works and tells me at lunch that he has completed 6 bars, but they are very significant ones. Before his work he reads Plutarch, which is just the right thing for him, since it does not overexcite him. He goes for a walk and enjoys the air. I have to stay indoors, and in the evening he drinks his grog in my room, after bringing me a belated Christmas gift!
He talks about his composition after we have spent some time, prompted by the parcel from London, talking about extract of roses, whose perfume (a particular favorite of his) he describes as “rapturous.” He says: “During the morning I was thinking something I could not tell a soul - that in a scene like this the words and music are concentrated, more or less like this extract, to make a frivolous comparison; I could talk about all kinds of subjects, say things only I could say, there is so much concentrated inside me. Yet one walks the earth in silence and is then forgotten.” I: “Forgotten!” He: “Oh, what is posthumous fame? I always think of Schopenhauer’s likening it to oyster shells. What does the world know of Goethe and Schiller except the shells? Till someone comes along to whom they mean something. Draft announcing the cancellation of Parsifal, to be appended to the Retrospect”; I observe that he can easily afford to let the year go by, make his announcement to the patrons, and return their money.
While we are passing the evening in chat, he looks back on his life and says, “I do not know whether I am dreaming now or was dreaming then - it must have been then, for I was always creating illusions for myself and deliberately keeping them alive.” He tells me of his sudden departure for Paris (1858), for which he borrowed money from Semper and Müller: “I was always wanting to go away and not return - if anything had turned up in Paris, I should not have returned, but nothing did. That’s why I cannot believe in those novels in which princesses in hooded cloaks come along - or a friend.” We laugh heartily at this thought, and then he speaks very warmly of Blandine, whom he met on this journey. He is much enjoying the Memorabilia.