Monday, February 5:
R. is a little tired, though he slept well. His mind is still full of Klärchen's death from the Egmont music — played yesterday by the conductor — with its churchlike chords. How such things occur to one — it reminded him yesterday of "over Heaven's vaults must a loving father dwell." Nietzsche's wretchedness also comes back into his mind.
Around 12:30 we go to see our sick Jouk., whose new picture of the gondolier Manolo with his mother pleases R. very much; he says humorously, "At last you have painted a good picture!" We then go for a walk on the Fondamenta delle Zattere and from there ride to Saint Mark's Square, where R. suggests going into the church to look for Zuccato's cupola, which we do not find! We look at the other mosaics, and R. observes how curious it is that people prefer the stiff, dark figures on account of their age and authenticity, to the more recent mosaics, which are much pleasanter.
In the gondola he spoke, in connection with Les Maîtres mosaïstes, of the Piombi and how it must appear to many to be a sort of natural wisdom to treat individuals with indifference and to set all hopes on the species. "But," he says, "Nature preserves what is best and most powerful, and human beings have at all times tried to destroy it." Reflections on Gob.'s error with regard to the Catholic church; and on the homeward journey, as I am gazing at the shuttered, unoccupied palaces, R. says: "That is property! The root of all evil. Proudhon took a far too material view of it, for property brings about marriages for its sake, and in consequence causes the degeneration of the race. This is what pleased me about Heinse's 'Blessed Isles' — that he says the people there owned no property, in order to avoid the many miseries connected with it."
At lunch much discussion with the conductor about the preparations for Parsifal. Over coffee we discuss the King's deficit; he is spending 500,000 marks annually on the theater (excluding the special performances); the army of officials needed for a theater like that is discussed, and R. thinks with pleasure of Bayreuth, our theater, where there are no officials, our friend Gross taking care of everything. In the afternoon he goes out by himself, sees gondolas with masked children passing Giovanelli, but he returns home tired, indeed languid. He has a massage.
What is bothering him today is Jouk.'s studio; he wants me to ask the Bardis for a north room in the palace for him. In the evening the casting of Parsifal is discussed, as well as the pleasure R. got from Materna's Kundry; he also declares his wish to do Tannhäuser in Bayreuth first; he says that if he can get this settled, he will have achieved more than by staging Tristan.
For the past two days he has been thinking of the Villa d'Angri; he would not be disinclined to rent it again, and in his mind he arranges our accommodations, saying he would like to live amid such striking surroundings. In bed he says to me, "I have got the accommodations arranged." And as I go to sleep I hear him speaking divine words to me, words I may not repeat, words which wrap me around like guardian angels and settle deep, deep in my heart like the most sacred of my treasures. "Good night, my angel," I said to him yesterday. "Good night, my dear wife — that means much more."