Saturday, June 4:
Letter from Herr Kietz. “The best thing about him is the silly boy,” says R., “the adult man is horrible.”
R. at his sketches, I with the children, alternately bathing, teaching, playing. R. shows me in the sketch the theme from the love scene between Br[ünnhilde] and Siegfried, which appears like a mirage as S. overpowers Br. and she subconsciously recognizes him. R. says, “When the ring was snatched from her I thought of Alberich; the noblest character suffers the same as the ignoble, in every creature the will is identical.”
At lunch he again complains about music as a profession: “Every kind of work which is unconnected with reason is a joke compared with it; here nothing can be forced, just as one cannot resume a dream by an effort of will, one has just to wait until it literally flies into one’s mind.”
In the afternoon letters by R. to Nietzsche, Eckert, etc. Rubbish received: a theologian wants a recommendation to Austria, a man in Riga wants a position as concert-master, an embassy secretary wants a recommendation for his compositions, etc.
In the evening I suddenly abandon the children and wander to the piano, something I normally never do now; R., returning home from his walk, is quite put out, because he wanted to use the piano himself, or, rather, had to, since the musical treatment of Siegfried’s sword-drawing was running through his head; laughing over our identity of thought, I left the room, he started writing, I put the children to bed. In the evening continued with The Taming of the Shrew.