Thursday, April 14:
R. had a restless night, fetched and read in Gobineau’s Essai. However, he is not out of humor in the morning and is able to work. At meals our talk revolves mainly about casting.
In the evening R. tells our friends about his disappointment with the costume designs, “shopworn women” where all should be innocence. “Everything in my art is chaste,” he can say with pride. Parsifal is played, Amfortas in the first and last acts and the conclusion. We stay up late, in a blissful mood.
Good Friday, April 15:
I dreamed of falling stars and the wish I then made. It was on the Posilipo, and the children showed me that what had fallen were fragments of glass, breaking apart. I am touched that the dream relieves me of the fervor of wishing, which the daily toil may not allow me to do, and that it brings to my mind all that fills my inner being. In the morning I hear the Parsifal Prelude, quite nicely played by the conductor. At midday we fast, R., the children, and I, and afterward I go to church with Loldi and Eva; the children and I all have Tintoretto’s Crucifixion in mind, and also the hour of three, when one is allowed to make a wish. R. works, and in the evening Dr. Schemann visits us with friend Wolz. But R. declares himself worn out by these evenings in which he is always obliged to talk about what is currently occupying him. He says he expects nothing more from societies; he had once done so, but now it is individuals from whom he expects everything.