Tuesday, March 30:
R. did not have a bad night, but still a somewhat restless one; a telegram from Wiesbaden, to which, he tells me, he feels like replying, “The D------ take you all.”
He complains bitterly about his situation, about these 3 years since the festival, the continual torment. He exerts himself to formulate an idea which he says he cannot write down: “Nature is blind, possesses only the will to know; in its blindness it was unable to measure the convulsions which were so to change things that animals and human beings, designed to live on mild nourishment, became fierce, meat-eating creatures. Now it is the task of human beings to attempt through reason to recognize the urges and instincts of Nature and to live according to them; to do in all spheres what, as Sch. puts it, developed reason had to do with regard to language.” “Human decadence stems from the fact that blind Nature was unable to foresee the effect of certain convulsions.”
(Yesterday he spoke of the injustice meted out to Schiller, even by Schopenhauer, who spoke of his Alba being painted black. The same injustice is done to Weber.) Before whist two evenings ago R. read to us the fine dissertation on language. In talking about Germany and the French, R. said, “But the dear Lord likes the French too much, and there’s nothing one can do against Him.”
He is still very run down; I hope it is the sirocco which is to blame, but above all it is his mood. He gives expression to it in a letter to the King, replying to a letter received today. In it he talks about his thoughts of America and desires Herr v. Perfall’s removal if he is to produce Parsifal. He writes only a part of the letter today. To Lulu, on the other hand, he sends some nice, humorous lines. In the evening whist with Loldi.