Saturday, November 26:
Before breakfast R. writes to Frl. Malten in Dresden to tell her that he would like to have her for Isolde as well as for Kundry. He comes to tea, somewhat tired, but recovered, and we laugh a lot when he tells me he has already had coffee.
He talks about the brother-sister relationship and says it is a remarkable metaphysical and physical law that such alliances do not flourish. In the morning, as I am writing to Herr Francke, he comes to me and recommends that I should read his “Retrospect of the Stage Festivals,” as he has just been doing; I find a similar pleasure in it, in the fact that everything has been stated openly.
We drive to the Flora and delight in the fantastic avenue of palms. On this walk it again happens that R. gives expression to what was in my mind. I will cite just one example. Gazing up at the clear sky, I asked myself whether even in Spain the coloring could have a more southern flavor; “You will have to see the Guadalquivir someday,” R. says to me shortly afterward.
After our return home he is soon with me again; he has recovered his health and is cheerful! In the evening the first act of Richard III... Before that he spoke of how anxious he is to complete his score; he says he is afraid of dying before it is done, and that he has felt this anxiety with every work of his.
Then he shows Rub. a subtlety in the orchestration with which he is very pleased: the first violins cease to play, replaced by other instruments. He talked of wanting now to write nothing but symphonies, adding, “But they are not wanted, the concert societies won’t perform them.” We talk of the fate of the Siegfried Idyll and recall with pleasure my father’s recognition.
“Oh, ho-ho!” R. exclaims. “However much he exasperates one, he is still quite beyond compare - the only one with a feeling for certain things.”