Tuesday, September 9:
R. slept well, woke up when, while he was looking for me, more and more people got in the way. Concern about Fidi, which rouses serious misgivings in me; we are disturbed by his equanimity - could it be that he lacks fire?
In the afternoon R. finds the ending to Parsifal and plays it to me as he has now finally written it. He says he went through the whole thing some 30 or 40 times in his head before giving it its present form.
In the evening Rub. brings the conversation around to Nietzsche, and, reflecting on this whole experience, R. becomes very upset; he cannot get over the perversity of such a character. We pass on to whist, and to end the evening Herr Rub. plays the overture to Der Freischütz, following it with the duet between Agathe and Ännchen, which truly uplifts our hearts in delight - what grace, what charm!
(Immediately after supper R. read to me the summary of Haug’s book; he is giving up reading it in spite of the pleasure he finds in some of its ideas. The Jews as “calculating beasts of prey,” for example, pleases him greatly.) “He is another true German,” R. says, “with very original and deep ideas, but crazy.”