Monday, July 14:
R. slept well, and the difficulty with which we part in the morning, always seeking each other out again to obtain another glance, another embrace, reminds me of “Day” in Tristan! ... Life is separation even in the midst of union, and every intense feeling, every impression contains within it a longing for death. The weather is still bad, showers and cold as if it were April.
R. finishes C. Frantz's book, and in the afternoon, when I go to greet him on my return from some shopping, he tells me he has to write to Frantz, he must get rid of it, his head is so full of it. And after a while he comes up to my room, telling me it is done, he has written himself into a state of dizziness, must go out into the garden a little, then he will read it to me. I am soon summoned and acquainted with his splendid letter. ... In the evening we read a little of Mart's pamphlet, recently sent to us. It is rather superficial.
(Yesterday R. played a theme, the first bar made me think it was an Italian melody, but with the second I knew it was something of his own and guessed Rienzi - but it was from his Liebesmahl der Apostel: “That's how I got by, poor fellow that I was,” says R.)
Tuesday, July 15:
R. had a good night and as he is embracing me exclaims, “The sun is inside us, let the weather outside be as it will!” Much about church and state; he says, “For me Christianity has not yet arrived, and I am like the early Christians, awaiting Christ's return.” But in the search for ideality, he adds, things look different! I get Lusch to make a copy of the letter to C. Fr. (see folder i in the corner bureau).
[Added two days later but referred back to this point: “Toward evening R. watches the golden clouds and the sun sinking down like a hero (he quotes K. Moor), and he thinks in a mood of mild reconciliation of his own death.”]
In the evening we are visited by two American ladies, mother and daughter, devotees and patrons, etc. Some music from Euryanthe is played, R. singing Lysiart, Herr Jäger Adolar. Then the Parsifal Prelude, also one of the “Pictures” (Siegmund and Sieglinde). The fine and majestic simplicity of the Wagner themes, their nobility, uplifts me once again and brings me consolation. The American march is also played in honor of our visitors.