Sunday, February 20:
Thoughts of decay and downfall do not abandon one; when the subject comes up first thing in the morning, R. says, "What is eternity?" And he recalls Cervantes's Numancia, the child who wants to be rescued but then prefers after all to die, a living proof of Rome's triumph. "Tremendously important, however," R. adds mockingly, "that such a town should be taken," and we recall Moltke's speech attacking the peace, and the opportunity France had at that time to give the world peace, to raze fortresses, Alsace-Lorraine to become independent like Belgium, and the small states relieved of the need to maintain large armies. Yesterday, in our conversation about Mendelssohn, R. recalled Disraeli's Tancred, in which it is asserted that all significant people are Jews. R. says, "Most of them are German Jews, and Disraeli overlooks the fact that it is German talent which is being used in this way."
When I hear R. going downstairs toward lunchtime, I wish to greet him, but he is much irritated by his fingers, which make any kind of manipulating difficult for him. But when I come down for lunch, he has regained his cheerfulness. He talks a lot about the German scholar's book, which is once again demonstrating to him that German science knows nothing: "If I had my way, not a single cent would be spent on them." "On the one hand this army, on the other these professors," he exclaims. Over coffee I read out loud a letter from Lusch. Then Dr. Hess arrives and tells him about rubber fingers; that consoles R., and our walk turns out to be cheerful, with some twittering from starlings and woodpeckers. Over coffee R. relates that he gave our handyman Krug a little lecture because the heating was late, and the good rascal made a peculiar impression on him. "A character of that sort is like some strange embryo. Heavens, when I compare him with Molly - what assurance, what completeness in her!" I say it is difficult to imagine what such a person would be thinking if, say, caught up in a revolution. "He would be like the Turco in Daudet," says R. - a thought which had already occurred to me as I asked my question. The marriage of Count Hatzfeldt's daughter to Herr Bleichroder, who is turning Catholic along with his family on account of it, gives rise to gloomy reflections. Presumably it has come about through the Count's debts. When we return home from our walk, R. recalls the passage in Parsifal which he is just orchestrating, "Waren die Menschen, die mir wehrten, bos'?" He is pleased with Gurnemanz's laughter in reply, and he says it was necessary in order to show the childlike qualities which make Gurnemanz believe that this is the creature for whom they have been waiting. In the palace gardens R. recalled the portrait of Louise Michel in the I. Z.: "Such are women: when men fall, heroism finds refuge in them. But in a horrible way; from a wit one might expect pity, but not from such a humourless woman." In the evening we had a different seating arrangement at table; R. did not wish to sit in the middle opposite me, but beside me at one end; we do it according to his wish, but it displeases him, and he wants to be put in the middle again, as our king. We read some of the conversation between the two dogs again, then R. does some improvising, something approaching the style of Tristan, and he also begins the Prelude, I having reminded him that I have heard it played so beautifully by him. He says he used to play frequently, among other things the Prelude to Lohengrin in the Willes' house in Mariafeld, for example, for Frau Wille had been a very good listener; artistic impressions sent her soul into a shiver. I recall that I first heard Tristan when my brother was lying mortally ill in my house, and he breathed in the sounds of it with me - love and death entwined! After our conversation R. told me that the wind instruments are causing him trouble, and he shows me what he has erased and altered in the "aber ist gut" passage.