Saturday, May 17:
R. did not have a good night. He tells me he dreamed about Weber, about encountering him in Stuttgart, speaking to him, and asking him whether he had really felt that he (R.) had musical talent, reminding him of his mother; when Weber gave no reply, R. said to himself, “Well, he is dead, he just doesn’t want to say it, he’s embarrassed.” This makes us laugh heartily.
Then our conversation turns to Homer (after R. has called me Pan-elopeia), and he says that Homer was really the poet par excellence, the source of all poetic art, the true creator. We recall several things in the Odyssey, and then he talks about the Iliad, how interrelated it all is, like a drama, and he talks of the difference between the two epics.
So the minutes tick by, and R. laughs as he looks at his watch, saying how good we are at prolonging this morning hour together. Ah, it is a golden time - the day still far away! Then, when we meet again, I can see from R.’s face that something has vexed him - Herr Fürstenau has written to say that Frl. Uhlig does not wish to return the letters!
R. writes his feelings concerning this to Herr F. Then an absurd article about Götterdämmerung in Kahnt’s periodical. R. tells Lulu in his name to forbid the delivery of the periodical.
Over coffee he tells me his experiences in the early hours: he woke up before four o’clock, got up, went downstairs, took some magnesia, checked the weather, cold and misty, arousing a longing for the South, then listened to the cocks crowing - one after another. Then upstairs again, regarded me as I slept, returned downstairs, looked at the bust of Materna, went to the window, the chorus in the poultry yard reminding him of the laughing chorus in Offenbach’s Orpheus (heard in Mainz some 20 years ago). Upstairs again, it was five o’clock - if it had been seven he would have taken his bath, but now he got back into bed and had at least eight disturbing dreams.
Then in his bath he falls asleep again! When we are discussing various things, Hans, my father, R. exclaims, “How rare to find a person who makes a religion of truthfulness and who cannot do other than he does!” In the afternoon R. corrects his article, then goes to the W.’s to fetch him back here. He returns home without being cheered up, but the children’s chat soon overcomes his mood. In the evening whist with Rubinstein and a dummy.
Then something in passing from Parsifal (“sah ihn und lachte” and the page after that). Afterward I recall that some days ago R. told me that Kundry was his most original female character; when he had realized that the servant of the Grail was the same woman who seduced Amfortas, he said, everything fell into place, and after that, however many years might elapse, he knew how it would turn out.