Saturday, January 11:
R. slept well but once again dreamed that I wanted to go away with my father! . . . “And then, to my great good fortune, the cock began to crow,” or, rather, Georg brought him his Ems water. After saying this, he tries to translate it into French and sings, “Et Dieu, pour mon bonheur, le coq se mit à chanter,” or, correcting himself, “le coq se mit au chant!” Much talk about the French; R. says he is ashamed that their instincts about the Germans in 1870 had proved correct (Schure, for example). Of the approaching silver wedding anniversary of the Emperor and the Empress [of Austria] R. says, “They’ll ask for the presents to be changed into gifts for charity and a few nice cannons.”
R. goes out twice today and is feeling well. In the evening I read the Memorabilia to him with all our usual enjoyment. He writes down another theme for a symphony. In the evening, when he fetches me for supper, he comes back to “But I will,” then says, “I will not, but I must.” “A human being must acknowledge necessity,” he says, “that’s what makes him divine.”
At our last parting in the evening, after countless other partings, he says to me, “When Parsifal falls in a faint, that is when it begins (the meadow will not be a separate thing in itself); it will be the loveliest moment. I already have much of it in sketches.”