Sunday, January 16:
Reflections on history and the development of mankind’s predatory activities lead me to ask in the morning whether these have not brought about art. “Certainly,” says R., “and that is why it is an evasion and a dismal substitute; it becomes something worthwhile only when it is religion, but not when robber chiefs set themselves up as judges over the art of their dagger thrusts. Keep that in mind,” he adds jokingly as he embraces me on our morning’s parting.
He works and is pleased that the 30 pages of his score already look imposing. But before he goes to work, immediately after our parting, he comes to me wearing my old fox fur, which he has had covered in black velvet in a single day as a surprise for me. He is happy to have brought it off and reproaches me for denying everything, the cold and all the rest, as exuberant again now as ever before!
He is still enjoying Gobineau’s stories. We go for a walk in the palace gardens, I in my new furs, this time just with Molly, since Marke has a glass splinter in his paw; she is very obedient. Before that, a letter from “an enchanted prince,” as he calls himself, containing much talk about the purely human factor, produces from R. the remark: “At the time I was corresponding with Uhlig I should have been in the right frame of mind for it and should have taken a look at this man. In those days I wanted at all costs to discover the purely human factor in everything, in Karl R[itter], Uhlig, everyone.”
He works in the evening as well and summons me to his side to drink some bock beer which he has had sent along and which he likes very much. I found him conversing with friend Jouk. about the minnesingers, in particular the poem by Emperor Heinrich, which I am asked to read aloud. Its delicate phrases please R. greatly, and he goes into raptures about that period, saying how cultivated it was, and how diversified.
We spend the evening in conversation. Among other things, R. says, “If the Russians took Constantinople, they would still stay up in St. Petersburg and rule the new territory from there.” When R. and I are alone, he goes to the piano and plays a passionately imploring melody from Bellini’s La Straniera, then another, in character not dissimilar, from I Capuleti ed i Montecchi, remarking on its long-drawn-out character, something one also finds in Spontini, whereas in Mozart almost everything is unfortunately shortly phrased. He then goes on to Rienzi and says he can understand my father’s and my delight in the work, since there is this streak of aristocracy in it.
As we part to change our clothes, we have the most blissful feeling of inseparability; he asks me to look after his health, “for I wish to live disgracefully long, fifteen years more than the allotted span, in order to make up for the time we have lost.”
Added at bottom of page: “An engineer in Helsingfors writes very nicely to Wolz. about his Wagnerianism and the flatter. He regrets J. R[ubinstein]’s article about Schumann, and R. is inclined to agree with me when I observe that this article, while remaining just as sharp, should have been more comprehensive and more detailed, Schu. as composer of oratorios, as symphonist, as opera composer, etc.”