Friday, June 6:
Fidi’s day - when we recently recalled R.’s past life, R. exclaimed, 'How different, how different!' Today R. writes to Vreneli, inquiring whether we might be able to spend a few days in Tribschen. Devout thoughts of that blessed day!
Presentation of gifts at one o’clock; the main present, the aquarium, causes great delight, and R. says Fidi should always be given something which gives pleasure to all. At lunch R. proposes the toast - 'Let Fidi be buried today - long live Siegfried, Siegfried the First!' - and it is decided that from now on he shall be given his full name. I spent part of the afternoon with R. in the summerhouse, and R. was then pleased when the ten boys, Siegfried’s guests, shoot toward him like arrows and bid him good day.
In the evening we go with Herr R. through the three Mendelssohn overtures, of which The Hebrides impresses us as truly masterly. Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage less so, because of certain weak sentimentalities, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream perhaps least of all. R. says he is outstanding as a landscape painter - but, oh, when his heart starts to stagger! And: 'It is a pity he saw elves as just like gnats, but musically it is very well done.'
Before that R. dictated to me a note for the management committee of the B. Blätter. When we are alone upstairs, R. tells me he wants to say something that sounds very much like self-praise: he has been thinking of Lohengrin and has come to the conclusion that in it he has provided a complete portrait of the Middle Ages. Among other things he mentions the sentries sounding their trumpets, and also the preceding fight. I add that Lohengrin is the only monument that shows the beauty of the Middle Ages.