Monday, June 26:
When I went to bed last night and thought sorrowfully of his day, I put all the strength of my being into a prayer; may I be permitted to say that I felt God quite close to me, as if a mighty protective spirit were enveloping my heart and its apprehensions? ... In the morning I saw R., who had been slumbering beside me, sitting on my chair opposite me, and his face did not alarm me; I simply knew that, just as I had fallen asleep with his image before me, so, too, did I now awaken. R. had a good night, but he takes medicine in the hope of avoiding a repetition of yesterday’s state. He reads The Destiny of Opera and is very pleased with it, says he has nothing more to say on this subject, which he has treated exhaustively. He is sorry that the article made no impression at all, for he is well aware that what he wrote in it about music was completely new and probably as worthy of being considered a landmark for a new way of seeing things as [Lessing’s] Laocoon in another territory. He had previously told me, half in jest but half in earnest, that Goethe and Schiller had never done anything as good. Over coffee he comes to talk about Schiller and singles out as the main feature of his character his composure, in spite of his otherwise pronounced straightforwardness. This term, taken over by R. from Bruno Bauer, defines the true nobility of the German character, he says, and, as an example, he relates how, after his breakneck flight, he said at last in reply to inquiries that, yes, he knew he must make his escape. Not taking fright - this is what saved Germany from the Catholics, who were out to sow fear. Unfortunately, however, R. is still in somewhat low spirits.
We drive with the children to Wolfsbach, where they get out, leaving R. and me alone; we talk about Siegfried’s education; R. does not agree with my plan of sending him to Stein in Halle for a year, and he suggests we look among the young people to whom free seats are to be given, to see whether a good house tutor cannot be found among them. As we were strolling in the garden before our drive, thinking of all the unpleasant things connected with the performances, R. swore this would be the last thing he would ever stage. We also talked about the Hannibal dialogue which Stein had just read to me; R. is surprised that he has not chosen for his theme Hannibal with Antiochus and his encounter with Scipio, the daemoniacally awesome and witty man and the old man dying a legendary death. But we are of one mind in recognizing the poetic talent of our friend, who reminds R. of Kleist. In the carriage R. reflects on his facial features, which he cannot reconcile with his talents. - Home again, there is more vexation: the dog Freia has run away from the theater, come back to us, and had to be removed, and our poor Molly seems to be really ill - the veterinary surgeon not to be found immediately! We eat in the garden, R. very agitated, but the evening finishes more peacefully than it begins; Rubinstein’s obstinate insistence on having seen "bar jeder Gefahr" in the score and having to compose a note to match it leads to some head-shaking over the poor man. R. sits down at the piano, turns the pages of Parsifal, then plays some Auber; this leads him to remark on the genius with which Auber wrote for the trumpet, and in contrast he shows how vulgarly Meyerbeer imitated him in the 5th act of Les Huguenots. What music is in and of itself he demonstrates with an example from Otello by Rossini (finale); he says old Bierey had once pointed out to him how bad it was, but when he heard Schroder-Devrient singing Desdemona, the whole anguish of the situation had been conveyed to him. "Such is the power of music," he exclaims; "what are maxims and opinions in comparison with that?" When mention is made at supper of the courage needed to compose music nowadays, R. says, "Music is the youngest of the arts, and it is a question of how it is applied, and whether one will just go on eternally reproducing for concert use that form of it which originated in dance!" The G Minor Symphony, played by the children, yesterday brought him almost to the point of despair on account of all the padding between its "divine inspirations." "Nobody would be more surprised than Mozart to see things like his masterpieces. Mozart had yet to show us what he was - had he reached the point of being able to work without worrying about earning his living." R. then recalls Schnorr, saying that he ought to have sung Parsifal, how long he has been dead, and how many people he, R., has survived. "You have invented the strangest macrobiotics for me," he then says to me!