Wednesday, February 5:
I have not written in my book. I felt unwell during the night of the 5th to the 6th and had to stay in bed for three days, till Sunday. R. kept a loyal watch beside me, full of divine love, read to me Plutarch’s glorious discussion of Socrates’s guardian spirit and also his own still more beautiful letter to the King about Fidi. In the meantime he fully completes the meadow.
On Monday the 10th I again ate downstairs. In the evening we went through Euryanthe (Scene 1), which, R. says, does not give him as much pleasure as he expected, too much glee-club music in the choruses. “That is a master stroke,” he says of the place where Lysiart enters treacherously, “but still so little awareness.” Then R. thinks of the finale to the first act of Il Barbiere (“All this tumult and confusion”), and we all delight in it.
R. worked on Tuesday, too. In the evening we went through the first act of Parsifal, but it gives R. no pleasure, since Herr R. does not get the accents or the tempi right. Arrival of “Scheherazade,” the new dress which R. has given me and which I put on!
Wednesday the 12th was a wretched day; R. has a cold, and I accompanied Lusch to a ball. Though I remained there only two hours, I still found it depressing!
Thursday the 13th, R. had a good night, is well, and goes to his work; in the evening he reads to me the strange, original, and profound conversation between Circe and Odysseus (Plutarch).
Friday the 14th, R. not well, speaks angrily about Lusch’s long stay at the ball (I had asked a friend to take care of her), feels indisposed and spends the day in bed; in the evening I read to him Gogol’s Hetman, that is to say, a scene from it which he wanted to tell me about after reading it himself and finding it very remarkable: it is the scene in which the new hetman is elected and the maddest confusion leads to a declaration of war.
Saturday the 15th, R. well, returns to his work, tells me at lunch that I must write some words for him — he already has the melody, which conveys the sense of the matter, but the words are lacking.
In the evening we read the discussion about the guardian spirit again, with genuine delight.