Sunday, January 26:
Up early, after having had to tell R. of yesterday’s “experience.” But an evening like that with all the people taking part forms a grotesque barrier between me and my inner self.
All the same I am able to open my heart to the sacred tones when R. plays to me the passage from where Kundry brings the water up to Parsifal’s words, “dass heute noch als König er mich grüße.”
R. says goodbye to Dr. Jenkins, after having yesterday given him the Ring des Nibelungen with a humorous dedication: Dr. J. had spoken about an art-loving Welshman, King Jen, and said his people were the “kin” of Jen, this in connection with R.’s joke that he learned his English in Wales and consequently spoke a bad dialect!
A sunny winter day tempts R. out of doors, but the air does not entirely agree with him. However, when I go downstairs to greet him, I find him reading Xenophon and very cheerful; after a little while he comes up to my room and says he must read to me a dialogue which he has just finished and which he finds heavenly; he then reads aloud the conversation between Socrates and Theodota, and it really is beautiful, charming, and witty beyond all words.
In the evening we read some more, but at ten o’clock I fall asleep! . . . And Burchtorff, the district president who held the ball, becomes a catchword in our home.