Saturday, June 7:
R. had a good night, and we plan an outing to Franconian Switzerland. After that he intends to begin his cure and then 'do something.' He wants to start on the orchestration of Parsifal with infinite leisure and enjoyment.
He is continuing to read The French Revolution with great pleasure. He tells me that after reading a chapter he found particularly moving, he said to himself, 'You must do everything with Cosima.' But then he had the feeling that we should wear each other out, dissolve into tears, get immersed in each other, and so it would be better if each of us had his own circle, and that we then came together again; but he is always thinking of me and talking to me!
Somewhat later, after he has rearranged some things in his room and we are strolling in the garden, he returns to this subject and says, 'Whenever I felt like telling you everything at once, I told myself, "Better after I have thought about it; on first impact it is all too exclamatory, telling you later means it will be deeper."'
A glorious evening, which R. and I enjoy immensely in the garden, though R. does say, when we are walking on the avenue, 'One doesn’t feel strongly enough how green everything is - one should break out into hymns of thanksgiving, praise Bacchus and all the other good spirits.'
In the evening R. reads to us Carlyle’s magnificent description of the festival of the Confederation. We then immerse ourselves in a discussion of history and nations; then of our form of art, and R. says, 'Whoever pins his faith on hope must be patient.' I tell him that I can understand love, faith, even bliss here on earth, but hope does not seem to me easy to achieve. We pursue this subject, and R. agrees with me that evil never fully triumphs, that good is never in vain, though it is only for each great man individually, even in defeat. World history as the universal seat of judgment - it is precisely this idea which can bring us comfort and inspiration, but not hope.
Thus more or less the outcome of our discussion, which became linked with 'Pandora’s box' when R. observed that such Goethe poems as Elpenor, Pandora, and Palaeophron and Neoterpe had all been forgotten; he describes Hermann & Dorothea as dispensable, and concludes the conversation with the grotesque remark, 'He dealt with his genius like a blockhead.' [The last three words obliterated in ink by an unknown hand.]