Thursday, May 29:
A restless night for R., wild dreams, raw weather, gray skies - are you envious, worldly daemon, or do you just wish to show us yesterday, compared with the day following, as the uniquely radiant treasure it was? R. mocks the specter and blesses our star! At lunchtime he comes to me to show me his letter to my father, which is celestial in its goodness. He would like to write to Doepler, whom he did not mention, and explain to him why.
He has been reading more Carlyle, with continuing pleasure; he says he is a dilettante and lacks depth, metaphysics, but his heart is in the right place. R. is also much struck by a coincidence: Carlyle pins his hopes on a proficient and goodhearted industrialist, and Turgenev shows us just such a person in Solomin in Virgin Soil. The gray skies clear; we part, after we have once more thought of the room upstairs, and R. has told me that he will still compose all he has in mind - symphonies, everything. He says the room seems to want him to tell it things, and I could say, “You see, I have looked after my husband so well that he just had to write Parsifal for me.” To my “Oh” he replies, “And now you are trying to deprive me of the stimulus of knowing that I am giving you pleasure.”
He says the time of composing Parsifal went past like a dream; never before had he been able to produce a work in such a way, never had the outside world remained so silent. We stroll together through the town, buying birthday presents for Fidi. In the evening a game of whist with friend Rubinstein.