Wednesday, September 10:
R. had a good night. He brings me the news that the Emperor has commanded a world exposition in Berlin (1883) - our capital city girding its loins for a cultural idea!
R. receives two nice letters, from a lieutenant of the Guards, v. Einem, and from a petty official, the latter in connection with “The Work and Mission of My Life.”
R. begins Louis Lambert, which I recommended to him; he is gripped by the child’s attitude toward the college and exclaims, “The best one could say to these people is, ‘Your educational institutions are all right for small talents, but a child of fine feelings, imagination, and sensitivity would be lost among you.’ ”
I have to do some shopping in the afternoon, and when I return home, I find the nest empty! R. flown; he returns in a bad mood, saying that he had really wanted to work. Rub. had called, and so he went to Angermann’s - we feel conscious that we have hardly seen each other all day!
In the evening Rub. brings along compositions by Herr Brahms and plays a concerto to us; very little pleasure in it, for to laugh at clumsiness, bombast, and falsity in art is no pleasure. Not a single melody, beginnings of themes from Beethoven and other masters, the composer’s realization that it is not his own - hurried Brahms has composed some nice songs, R. says that everybody has done that - “even I!”
Then R. shows me the two bars he has added to the Prelude, in order to bring out the one theme better. Wonderful internal spinning; to us the work appears finished, yet he feels the urge for still greater perfection. When Siegfried saw the volumes of Brahms lying there, he asked his father to play the “Hungarian Dances” to him; R. tells me this in a tone of voice which leaves me in no doubt about his feelings; for me it is a stab - and there is nothing I can say, no way of preventing it - I also have not the courage in this case to plead for the strength of renunciation.
Taking leave of me in the evening, R. says to me, “If only you could hear the monologues I carry on regarding you!”