Friday, June 3:
“The words convey only the ghostliness of the apparition, the music sounds just innocently grieving,” R. said yesterday. Before that he exclaimed: “When I have finished this first act, I shall have unloaded a formidable piece of work. To me the most singular thing of all is that I have managed to do the Norns’ scene to my own satisfaction.” I: “And yet it is a lovely piece!” “That is the music,” he says, etc.
Letter from our new friend Hans Herrig, who is having great difficulty with “the music drama,” yet who seems a very remarkable person. R. replies to him. Letter from the conductor Marpurg, who is very indignant that anyone should have thought he would conduct Die Walküre in Munich in R.’s absence.
R. works; we are glad to be alone again. In the afternoon visit of Countess B. with her daughter; the child behaves very nastily to Loulou, her first experience of feeling offended; for her benefit I draw from it the moral that she must seek everything in the love of her brother and sisters, expect nothing from the outside world.
In the evening The Taming of the Shrew. “How low we have sunk can be seen in what the German theaters have done with this play.”
A Jew, Herr Strousberg, has bought the A.A. Zeitung, the only paper which was not hitherto in the hands of the Jews, having belonged to an old German firm!!