Saturday, January 18:
R. had a disturbed night. . . . I find it hard to bear all the love with which he nevertheless always overwhelms me! . . . However, he does some work, and at lunch he tells me he is satisfied with it, but he does not wish to go out of doors. We admire the lovely frost-covered landscape and talk about Italy - Naples next year. When I go to him in the afternoon he has just been looking through [Mendelssohn’s] Saint Paul and is filled with utter disgust for it, calling it Jewish through and through, facile in form, shallow in content: “To serve us that,” R. exclaims, “after we have known Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber! - And as if one could ever hope to imitate Bach!” He is sorry that my father writes oratorios.
We read the first half of another of the Zurich stories (“Das Fähnlein der sieben Aufrechten”) with great enjoyment, except that I do not care for Frymann’s speech, which seems to me too Periclean; R. says the Swiss get this sort of pathos from the pulpit, but he is inclined to agree with me. After that three preludes and fugues from the second book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, and we are particularly affected by the 9th. (Dr. Eiser is asking for the Prelude; R. annoyed, for nobody is supposed to know that it was performed...
Sunday, January 19:
R. again did not have a good night, and he has chest congestion. It is very cold. He works but does not go out. (At supper yesterday he talked about an article in the Illustrirte Zeitung, “The Elk Fighting the Wolves,” and said it had taught him some very curious things - how in Nature even the most heroic must perish, men as well as animals, “and what remain are the rats and mice - the Jews.” I told him that I had seen friend Wolz.’s two sisters-in-law in the mental hospital, and he talks with horror of the maintenance of such poor creatures, “which uses up the energies of the healthy and the good.”) I am kept very busy with the children, since the governess is away. R. has a short session with Herr Jager, the scene between Siegfried and the Norns, which soon exhausts him! In the evening he reads to our small company (Jag. and the Wolz.’s) more of the Aufrechten, which causes very great merriment.
Monday, January 20:
But R. had a very bad night, had to get up three times; a little dessert at lunch, then in the afternoon a glass of Ems water with milk, following the session with Jager, gave him real indigestion. He does no work, but rests, and at lunch does not look too bad. He also ventures out on the ice today. In the evening we finish the nice story. Recently, talking of G. Keller’s personality, R. said, “When he started talking and had something good to say, words poured from him like potatoes out of a sack.” Then he puts his hand on Mendelssohn’s Antigone and we go through parts of it with amazement, noting that M. does not once pay heed to the Greek verse meter and declaims it in the most nonsensical way. R. also draws my attention to the markings - “allegro,” “tempo di marcia” - this terrible tragedy! Then he takes up Figaro, plays the concluding finale and the two Cherubino arias so beautifully that, as always when he plays anything, I feel as if the secrets of art are being unveiled anew. I have a vision of a performance of this splendid and lovable work in our opera house here under his direction. “But with which singers?” R. asks. “Preferably Italians - Patti and Nicolini!” At once I have to admit the impossibility of achieving any sort of effect.
Tuesday, January 21:
It seems to me like a victory over life that R. had a good night! Toward one o’clock he says to me, “I have also done some composing, have done everything!” We drive out a little, paying calls, and are very cheerful; we discuss my present reading, Die Nibelungen, and enjoy the wintry yet bright sunshine. In the afternoon R. goes for a walk, and this does not appear to do him any good, for he is not feeling very well - at any rate he says the air felt unpleasant. But the evening passes in a very lively, cheerful way; first of all he goes through the choruses from Antigone with W[olzogen] and R[ubinstein], and we are once again astounded by their glee-club ordinariness; the allegro of the Overture also horrifies us with its triviality. Then several things from Die Entführung aus dem Serail, after which Herr R. recommends Idomeneo, but this does not please us and we go on to [Gluck’s] Alceste. R. plays through the Overture with R[ubinstein] and sings the Herald; this is both touching and uplifting - even antique, R. observes. Before that he had sought out some fine metrical examples (by Bach), since he cannot get over his amazement that Mendelssohn could find no way of matching the rhythms of Greek verse - he, a philologist, and so well educated! Speaking of his own work, R. says he now has only 9 more pages of his text to set to music, and all the epic scenes are finished.