Saturday, January 22:
R. slept well.
At breakfast we come to the subject of the dispatch of R.'s letter to Frege and the possible consequences. I remember the time when this action, and what it will mean for the children, would have caused me boundless anxiety, but now I am ready to accept in complete confidence everything that R. does, and determined to bear it all joyfully.
R.'s finger is tormenting him, and I find him in very poor spirits when I come down to lunch; it turns out that tar was not the proper treatment.
All kinds of things have arrived, including a pamphlet by Paul de Lagarde. R. glances through it and finds it written in such a way that one does not know whether he is for a certain matter or against it. Dr. Forster has sent an appeal for the founding of an anti-Semitic newspaper. R. relates that he wrote to him from Naples, “Find out whether you fit into Prince Bismarck's plans.” And it seems that they fit in with them, for they are adopting his whole program. “We Bayreuthers will remain very isolated with our ideas.”
At lunch, in connection with Ollivier and Ferry, R. thought of Blandine, saying that Ferry, whom Blandine idolized, is carrying out Ollivier's program, which is, as he once told R., to effect all reforms by political means. During lunch R. gradually regains his spirits, and he even exclaims, “Good food chases off a bad mood.”
The walk, with its prelude of joyfully barking dogs, delights him in spite of the cold and what he calls an “ironic” sunset. He works in the evening and reaches Parsifal's arrow shot.
In the evening we turn to Gobineau. Yesterday, when I informed him that Gobin. had a malicious wife, R. exclaimed how terrible it is that a youthful urge to find fulfillment must then be dragged in misery through one's whole life. He mentions the naive method of divorce among Orientals, and says how wrong the woman's place is in our society is: on the one hand making a show of chivalrous devotion, yet on the other holding her in contempt.
Friend W0I2. pays us a visit; we abandon our reading, and many things are discussed: the response to reproaches for throwing the performances open to the public, then the guarantee certificates and also the subscription for Parsifal, to which R. is looking forward. “I look forward to having a little capital, always supposing that I have paid off my debts with the rest of my earnings.” It is Mimi's birthday; we drink her health and sing her praises. We have sent her the biography; now five of our friends possess it: the King, my father, W0I2., Glasenapp, and Mimi.
When our friends have gone, I say, “How sad that there is nothing more in our glasses.” At once R. calls Wok. and Jouk. back, and another half-bottle of champagne is sent for. In very merry mood, “No one else has half our talents,” R. exclaims, we conclude the evening for the second time.
R. has written to Lilli Lehmann about engaging the Flower Maidens. R. tells Wok. that he has been thinking about the meaning of the word “free” and has gladly adopted the Swiss sense as he once heard it used: in the canton of Appenzell a guide was recommended to him with the words “He is a free man.” “Free” means “true,” someone who has no need to lie; otherwise “free” would always have something negative about it, “freedom,” free of this or that person, but in this case, he says, it is the lie which is negative. The root of the Greek word “eleutheros,” says Wok., has a connection with our word “lauter” [“pure”], so that it is not very far removed from the meaning favored by R.