Tuesday, October 4:
A letter from a friend who says that if the world were to collapse she would save only Tristan brings from R. the remark that he can understand this, for in Tristan he gave himself up entirely to music; in the other works the drama had imposed a tighter check on the musical flow.
He has another massage. When that is over, we have breakfast in cheerful spirits, and he cites a suckling infant as the most drastic expression of the will to live: all that raging when it is hungry, and the calm once it is satisfied, followed in some by laziness and in others by a desire to play. He says he observed this among the puppies.
He works and then sits for the medal man, after which, despite snow and cold, we go out for a drive and, during it, talk a lot about philosophizers such as Schelling, etc. In reply to my question whether he thinks C. Frantz will understand his article and be drawn by it away from Schelling and on to Schop., R. says no.
But in the evening he does not feel well; he plays a little whist, then withdraws with W. Scott (he has finished Trois ans en Asie). “I do my work amid spasms and stupid people,” he exclaims plaintively! We had some acquaintances here. He has to point out to friend Wolz. yet another mistake in his piece about Parsifal - that he makes Parsifal take part in the Communion.