Thursday, October 16:
R. slept well. At 12 o’clock the second act of Siegfried; when R. sings the words accompanying the burial of Fafner, the figure of Siegfried seems to become daemonic, overwhelmingly huge - superhuman! And when he sings of the doe and the human mother, I feel - through the music, as it were - that the connection between human beings and animals, with the human beings’ superiority over them, is being movingly proclaimed.
At 5 o’clock the third act - and this is too much for us poor mortals! R. is worn out, our good conductor completely ill, Herr Jäger somewhat exhausted; so we have a family whist party, the two daughters, R., and I, after R. has sent for friend Wolz. and read to him and to us the remarkable passage in Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero-Worship (Shakespeare) about infinity, music, melody.