Monday, October 2:
R. slept well; he dreamed that a (40th) jubilee performance of Rienzi was being given in Dresden; he was to conduct it, but he was held up with me on a bridge. When we arrived, he heard church music from the first act and said, “The Court is bound to put my coming late down to conceit.” In the morning he reads Buddha. At breakfast we talked about Siegfried, who is looking very pale, and we feel he is finding Stein’s company too much of a burden. In the afternoon a letter from Dr. Strecker, enclosing a copy of R.’s contract with Frau Lucca (according to which she seems to have the right to publish), causes R. great vexation. We go out with Siegfried, get out at the colonnades, and, after visiting a decorator’s shop in which the modern things which attracted R. from outside displease him greatly inside, come via the Piazzetta to the courtyard of the Doge’s Palace and look at many things in it. The high wall with just the three windows pleases R., too; he says, “What promise of ceremony that holds out!” We gaze at the fountains. But the Roman statues make R. indignant; “What are such things doing here?” At the exit the lovely single window delights him, then the griffins, and we gaze at the Knights Templar, who gave him the idea for the headdress of his Knights. Yesterday, when I asked him to turn around and look at the gateway to the courtyard of S. Zaccaria, he told me he knew it by heart; on his earlier visits people had always brought him that far and no farther. I tell him jokingly that it is I who have taught him a feeling for art! In the Giardino Reale he recalls that it was there that he first received the news of Lohengrin’s success in Vienna. On the homeward journey he is amused by the man in the gondola who, accompanied by a barrel organ, imitates opera singers and conducts. R. says he is without doubt a destitute orchestra player, and he could write his whole life.
[Added at the bottom of the next two pages but referred back to here: “But afterward he relapses into thought, then says, half to himself, ‘All these experiences before getting ready for Parsifal — ‘A terrible world!’ — again half aloud, shaking his head — ‘small wonder that it should respond to the question of Parsifal with Strecker, Lucca, Batz!’ — And further: ‘About church and military but nobody else ever thinks of such things!’”]
In the evening R. plays and sings to us Tristan’s appearance in answer to Isolde’s summons. Then friend Rub. arrives and, at our request, plays us the conclusion of Götterdämmerung; R. joins in and sings Brünnhilde’s last words, and is pleased with it all, so heathen and Germanic! “It is so free,” he says, “yet at the same time so tender.” “I am glad that I had the ability to paint in variegated colors.” He recalls Gobineau and the Germanic world which came to an end with this work, and says he wishes for strength to stage the Ring once more and do it well.