Wednesday, June 15:
Arrival of my wedding dress, plans for Fidi’s future, R. plays to him, he listens earnestly; R. works. In a long conversation in the morning he examines the nature of the world: “Nature did not intend human beings to aspire higher than building themselves something like an anthill; great minds are anomalies, and one must not judge the masses according to them; when the people themselves are gifted with imagination, they do not bring forth anthills as do the English and the Swiss, who are the unimaginative ones; but out of a state of disorder they produce interesting personalities.”
Passing then to our plans for the production of the Nibelungen: “What is gratitude, what is time? Once it is there, it will exist for humanity forever. Even if I know I shall never change the masses, never transform anything permanent, all I ask is that the good things also have their place, their refuge. The common and the bad must occupy and retain the main expanse, but the good can perhaps still find asylum.” “You’ll see,” he exclaimed yesterday, “you’ll see. Die Walküre will still turn out to my advantage; it is true I can have nothing to do with it, but something will emerge which will be of more advantage to me, to my plans, than if the present silence persisted unbroken.”
At the conclusion of the third book of W. M., he said, as he laid the volume down: “How was it with us? Did we know how united we were? That is something only God decides.” Frau Ras, the charming embroiderer from Appenzell, visits us, then to town with R. In the evening more of W. Meister. Glorious moonlit night. “You have made three wishes, Dauphin,” R. suddenly says. “Do you know,” he adds, “what wish I have just made to the moon? That I may be spared ever having to leave your side in order to gain a living for us; it would be terrible to have to part from you under such conditions.”