Saturday, January 22:
Still unwell, R. gives me Sigurd to read, a drama by Ettmüller, a friend from Zurich. It is very archaic in style and irritates me. Since R. welded the Edda myths into his Ring, everyone has been making plays out of them; their work is discussed and praised, while R.'s unique and eternal work, but what does it matter? Wrote yesterday to Frau Schuré.
At lunch R. informs me that he has received a letter from the lawyer, from which it seems the divorce is being held up; Hans has given no sign of life, and his presence in Berlin is required to complete the matter. I write to Hans's lawyer. Concern that Hans might be upset. I am willing to bear the wretched situation into which I have brought myself, and even the difficulties which arise for Fidi out of the uncertainties, as payment for my priceless happiness!
Then I wrote to E. Ollivier, who has been attacked in the most despicable manner in the Lower Chamber; thus he will not think it is his advancement which has tempted me to approach him again.
In the evening R. reads me passages from the first part of Faust; on reaching the verse "I am too old to be content with play," R. says, "Goethe discerned this highest wisdom in his early youth; so one sees how stupid it is to assume that poets must first live through what they write."
A lot of news in the papers; first, the very remarkable protest by the cathedral provost Döllinger, signed with his own name, against the infallibility speech; then, so R. tells us, the execution of Uncle Traupmann, who murdered a family of eight people; then the Ollivier government and its struggles.