Saturday, February 11:
The doctor says he cannot yet speak definitely of an improvement; we shall have to let the requisite number of days go by. R. has a slight sore throat and keeps to his room, complaining greatly about our stay here. He also does not care for his reading - Stein's dialogues on the Revolution - and he decides not to write a preface, since these pieces seem to him very juvenile. He transfers his attention to Shakespeare and in the evening reads to me the great scene between Beatrice and Benedict, pleased that in it the hollow wit and the cruel cynicism of the princes and counts are emphasized, thus allowing one to feel that Shakespeare took no pleasure in depicting these trivialities, but brought these Renaissance figures back to life only out of his sense of truthfulness. He is extremely delighted with Beatrice's reply to Benedict's desire for no tears, and this “peasant simplicity” enchants him as much as the jesting about eating the sword repels him. He also finds the scene between Leonato and Antonio particularly pleasing.
Telegram from Leipzig about the Ring cycle; R. is pleased with Herr Neumann. Then he talks to me about the Society of Patrons and what he might do to ensure that after our death the cause does not fall into the hands of petty people, hindering Siegfried in all he undertakes. He asks himself whether he will retain enough strength and desire to stage his other works, besides Parsifal, there; he says he ought to take them all up again, with close attention to detail - Tannhäuser, for instance.
In the afternoon, after having lunch alone upstairs (I had mine with the girls), he came down and, finding Loldi alone in the salon, he played to her “her themes” from Frisian, as he told me when I thanked him for the kind greeting I heard as I sat in the sickroom! Today R. complained about no longer having a home anywhere, since Wahnfried has been spoiled for him by so many things. I reply that this is the outward sign of our detachment, and this leads to the subject of “no when or where,” R. full of admiration for the fine way in which Schopenhauer expressed this condition. Regarding our present civilization he exclaims, “It cannot even invent any names” - the name “Emile” put this into his mind. I shall bring the day to an end with the blessing he uttered to me: “Whoever is tended by you cannot die.”