Friday, September 2:
R. had a good night, and the day brings the very pleasant assurance that Marianne Brandt will be able to sing Kundry well. R. summons me downstairs, since he is so pleased with her, and she touches us very deeply with her first words to Parsifal. Her outward appearance, we feel, can be overcome, since, as R. tells us, “Everything about Kundry is costume, her ugliness, her beauty, all of it a mask.”
The affair of the newly installed Bishop of Trier, Dr. Korum, who has in the end been exempted from taking the oath, brings R. back to the manner in which Bismarck deals with things, even the struggle with Rome! I read a reporter’s account of a visit to Dr. Korum, in which the Bishop’s amiable reserve reveals all the superiority of the Catholics: “They are the only ones among us who still follow in the footsteps of the Brahmans,” R. says.
R. is much taken up with his work, and he tells me in the evening that its significance depends on the detail and the settings. We play whist, I always with R., since he is quite happy to lose with me, but cannot bear me to win against him. Still dull and damp weather; we do not go out of doors, R. says the air barks at him.
President Garfield’s condition seems to have improved slightly, and R. tells me that, when he said farewell to his wife and asked her to return to their home, telling her that, unless a miracle occurred, their final separation was nigh, his wife is reported to have replied with great energy, “The miracle will occur!” And now his condition is indeed said to have taken a turn for the better!
We talk of separations, and how irremediable they are, that is to say, the impressions they leave behind. And R. recalls old times and all our many torments! “Things have become much nicer, much nicer,” he repeats.
There was a discussion about the desire for money, and the children. “I don’t know what I should need money for, but as it is, in a saloon carriage on the railroad, for instance, with all the children’s heads at the windows, or in the theater watching them sideways, leaning forward in excitement, that is joy.”