Sunday, November 5:
[Enclosed in the Diaries, a report dealing with the causes of Gobineau's death; see notes.]
R. slept well, and at breakfast we talk about Romeo; I compare his second parting from Juliet, when he sees her in the tomb and at the same time sees day breaking, with Tristan’s “dreary day, the final time.” R. says that this daybreak in the 5th act does in a curious way typify the falsehood and deceit of the world, also the world of morals, I add (through Marke). R.: “But only because he behaves kindly through all the falsehood and deceit, a force of Nature restrained by convention.” This reminds me that it is precisely at this point that he so frequently has the feeling that I should have fled to him in 1858 and started my life with him then!
Since he wishes me to complete my obituary for Gobineau, he goes to the Piazzetta by himself in the morning and meets the children there. In the afternoon we arrange to meet in Saint Mark’s Square, but I find him in Lavena’s shop, having had a spasm. Riding in the gondola, he and the girls had heard strains of Eohengrin; he then tried to hurry, and that brought on the trouble! Hardly is the spasm over, however, when he beckons Tesarini and invites him and the music director to our house in the evening on account of the wrong tempi! But he then says to me, “I ought to forget who I am, make no sudden movements, and turn into a boring donkey!” Not even this mood can prevent his enjoying the beauty of this place and drawing our attention to it. “This is a theater,” he says, stopping in front of the twin columns, and he indicates both stage and auditorium. Then, gazing at the Doge’s Palace, he praises medieval architecture and says that with its passing all imagination, life, and invention were lost; the whole Renaissance leaves him cold. He declares the place where the gondolas put in to be the loveliest urban spot anywhere. At home he reads the obituary and tells me he will copy it out for the printers!
After supper, at which he eats almost nothing, he discusses the tempi with the musicians, and then I read to him some things from the Musik. Zeitung, unfortunately not at all pleasing, neither the report on Berlin nor the article by friend Pohl, who is hoping for a Jesus of Nazareth, nor friend Wolz.’s “For and Against.” His work, on the other hand, I find refreshing.