Wednesday, May 10:
Nice telegram from England. R. continues his letter to the King. Then he tells me the barometer is falling—he thought it too good to be true; he says he should sing, “Vanish, you dark arches above!” R. says of the weather that it is like having drunk bad beer! In the evening he plays pieces from Die Meistersinger. At lunch he talked about Tristan und Isolde in connection with his idea that Nature has a craving to produce something great and redeeming. Tristan is the greatest of tragedies, R. says, for here Nature is thwarted in its finest work. In the evening he talks about Beethoven, particularly the first movement of the 9th Symphony, which Beethoven marked maestoso—in R.’s opinion very significant for this wild, sorrow-laden piece; what this movement is cannot be expressed in words, he adds, though he had tried to do it. Then he comes to racial questions, to Ottar Jarl, which he is reading with interest, and the day finally ends with his longing to be alone with me. He said much more about Tristan—how absurd to perform a work like this for money!