Monday, February 3:
R. complains that for him the latter part of the night, from 4 o’clock onward, is always bad. But he works and says to me, “Do not expect too much from the meadow — it must of course be short, and it cannot express delight in nonexistence, as in Tristan.” Then he laughs and says, “Rubinstein will ask, ‘How does it happen that Parsifal recognizes Kundry?’ — if indeed he does recognize her.” And he continues: “It is all unspoken ecstasy, as Parsifal returns home and gazes upon this poor woman.” Oh, if I could only reproduce the expression on his face and the sound of his voice as he describes the state of Parsifal’s soul!
Then he tells me once more something I forgot to note down on Saturday: when he was walking beside the pond he heard a curious horn sounding, very absurd, and it was probably blown by the watchman on the ice; everyone vanished from the pond and he continued his walk alone; suddenly he saw on the snow the very faint shadow of himself and the two dogs, and, glancing up at the sky, he saw the moon in its first quarter. It had been a very mysterious moment; probably as a child he would have laughed heartily at the horn, but nobody had laughed. When we part I say, “You divine man!” and he replies, “No, you,” then adds, “Unspoken ecstasy!” Ah, yes, that exists between us! ... A wonderful head of Hermes from the new excavations at Olympia (illustrated in the I. Z.) gives R. another opportunity to talk about the ancient world, and he says, “How pitiful we look in comparison — like barbarians!”
R. goes out, is pleased with his room, which I help to arrange, calls it his shaman, and then goes down to his work. But suddenly he is upstairs with me again: “I shouted to the children from the hall, asking them to call you, but nobody heard; I have come upstairs to tell you that the entry of the kettledrum in G is the finest thing I have ever done!” I accompany him downstairs and he plays to me the anointing of Parsifal by Gurnemanz, with its wonderful canon, and the baptism of Kundry with the annihilating sound of the kettledrum: “Obliteration of the whole being, of all earthly desire,” says R.
In the evening we come back to a declaration by Herr R. which yesterday astonished us — that on his first encounter with them, when he was a student at the Vienna Conservatoire, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin made no impression on him at all! It is intellect which has brought this poor man to his feeling for these works.... Later R. discusses with me the inner loneliness of such a piteous character, and says this makes Rubinstein interesting in his eyes; he has found his way back to him in spite of the gulf which divides one from such a person. At the end of the conversation R. says to him gently, “We are trying to explain a phenomenon to ourselves; it is not dislike but liking that sets us on this path.” And he concludes jokingly, “You’ll probably take that again as an affront.” We then go on to a Brahms symphony, which R. plays as a piano duet with Herr Rubinstein, and which again downright disgusts us. R. talks indignantly about its vulgarity, and we then seek salvation in the final pages of Plutarch’s essay on garrulity.