Sunday, June 4:
He had a good night, but his disgust at having anything to do with a person like Herr Batz, his having (as he puts it) to keep starting over from the beginning, and also the unpleasantness of his relations with the Vogls - all this upsets him greatly! And Die Kawi-Sprache is providing insufficient enjoyment. He compares this work to his Opera and Drama and says, “Such things are studies, explorations which one makes for one’s own benefit, but which ought not to be published.” However, he feels his Opera and Drama was more clearly defined.
Friend Gross comes around with the mayor and tells us they have just been having a discussion, the outcome of which is nil. It is very revealing of this individual that Herr Batz thought R. was in debt to these gentlemen, and that was the reason for their taking his part in such a lively fashion! However, R. soon recovers his spirits and is firmly resolved not to have anything more to do with this man whom he finds so repulsive.
He writes to Seidl today, I to Richter. In the afternoon we are visited by a Dr. Druffel, army physician from Minden and representative of the W[agner] Society there. We spend a while in the turret, where the talk is much less about the Society than about brigands; our Count openly expresses his loathing of them, yet at the same time tells us things about their behavior - such as their respect for women - which reveal such generosity that R. feels they must stem from different and very ancient times.
Garibaldi’s death has caused a great stir in Rome; R. compares him to Timoleon, though in our times the example looks less estimable! For R. there is something great and epic about his final journey to Sicily, and the fact that politics were behind the hero’s great deeds in no way reduces his greatness.
A thunderstorm is hanging threateningly over us as we have supper in the hall. R. thinks of King Lear and, recalling both this play and Othello, ruined by “a corporal’s cunning,” exclaims, “He was the greatest of them all.” Then he reflects on Shakespeare’s 12 years of activity, his retirement to Stratford, drinking his glass of wine with the rest after having shown us the world as it is, yet never revealing himself. Then he opens King Lear at the third act, and Kent’s question, “Who’s there, besides foul weather?” arouses his mirth.
And again and again, in good times and bad, we are today as much aware as ever of what we mean to each other, more fervently perhaps after 18 years than at the beginning! And birds are building their nests in our salon! Yesterday we thought a little bird had got lost, and we tried to free it, but today we discover that three nests have been started, and there is a constant fluttering to and fro. This afternoon, R. tells me, when he came downstairs a little bird was trying to get in, but when it became aware of him it flitted away like Siegfried’s bird before Wotan.
Over coffee the martyrdom of Saint Blandine was mentioned; the Count spoke of the misunderstandings behind canonizations: she had certainly been a heretic, but the church represented her to the people as a pure Catholic; R. argues heatedly that it is the example which makes so great an impression - what the church does with it, 10 years or so after death, is of no account; what is inspiring is the martyrdom. And such beings as Saint Francis - they ultimately unwittingly served the church’s ends, even if they had nothing in common with it. Like, for example, the Count’s lame sister, who from her 14th year had no thoughts but to become a nun; it is examples like these, R. says, which the Jesuits promote, and it is these which give them their strength. Before this we had been talking about mercy, about Calderón’s play Devocion de la cruz; in it R. sees a very profound truth, which, however, was bound to lead to abuses of the worst kind.
Monday, June 5:
R. slept well and is cheerful in spite of all unpleasant embarrassments. From his room in the morning he sings to me, “We belong to the temperance society!” in connection with Die Kawi-Sprache, which he finds very boring. I go in, and we look at the portraits of me. “You can believe me,” he says, “it is impossible to paint either of us.” A letter from Lulu saddens us, and R. reproaches himself for having exposed the girl to such conflicts through his interference. What he finds worst of all, he says, is that even here there is nothing he can do. Since our Count is now feeling somewhat better, our conversations are also cheerful.
In the afternoon R. and I go for a walk in the palace gardens. We chat in the evening, and R. amuses us with his remark that educated, intelligent people write boring books, but are very pleasant in conversation. At supper he expressed his dislike of Ariosto and the whole of what he calls Renaissance poetry, which is based on Vergil, another poet he cannot bear. Cervantes, on the other hand, comes immediately after Shakespeare, in his opinion.
Gob. talks about French audiences and tells us, among other things, of a man who, after seeing a Racine play, told him that such things make him feel like a better person! R. declares that German audiences, furthermore, are merely a copy of the French, and he utterly rejects my claim that they are better than French ones.
In the end he accepts my “neglected talents,” but he says they will put up with anything, and their music-making, glee-club activities are a kind of hypocrisy. How would it be possible otherwise, he asks, for them to cheer all sorts of other things besides Beethoven? And articles by Hans, etc., can still be published, and a composer as wretched as Saint-Saëns is said to have written the best German opera after his, R.’s.