Tuesday, June 13:
The gray and windy weather makes R. downright indignant, and when he sends for more champagne at lunch, he says all that is left to do is either to drink or to grumble. In the morning he works on his letter to Schön and tells us jokingly that he is complaining about everything. In the afternoon we drive up to the theater and see things which do not please us-the first woodland scenery and the final transformation scene; the cupola of the Temple of the Grail also does not satisfy us completely. The B. Blätter makes a good impression on R. with its account of the Parsifal reading by actors in Brunswick. Then R. talks with the Count about the religious reality of the Persian and also the Greek theater; he says the various actions shown in it suggest the priest taking the holy wafer himself; this no longer happens, and what he, R., is showing is the dream vision.
In the evening R. reads to us Faust, Part One, the scenes from the walk up to the entrance of the traveling student-the first scene with Mephisto strikes R. as particularly masterly. Late in the evening, when we are already in bed and about to fall asleep, I hear R. say: “What makes a person beautiful? A direct communication between the heart and the brain.” He was thinking of our girls.
[A sentence based on untranslatable wordplay omitted.]