Saturday, October 15:
// I let the children play in the garden, write to the headmistress of the school that I need her assistance only for English. At lunch R. says that Bavarian and Prussian troops are disputing with one another, the latter wanting to plant their black-and-white flag everywhere, the former insisting either that the black, red, and gold should be used for all, or the white and blue for Bavaria, the black and white for Prussia, etc.—and they are right. We deplore the Prussians’ rigid and narrow-minded approach to this matter. Rainy day, R. goes through the second act of Siegfried with Richter; Fafner’s last words to Siegfried move me beyond words, I told R. it was a feeling such as I had in seeing a dying animal, which is perhaps more touching than the sight of a dying person—or at any rate moving in a different way. R. replies, “With an animal the resignation is more instantaneous, because death comes to it unexpectedly, whereas a human being has been fighting against it all his life.” We call Siegfried Kasperl and Fafner the animal which wants to gobble him up, R. says it is something along these lines. In the evening Don Juan; I realize that I do not understand much, indeed hardly any of the satire in it, but on the other hand thoroughly enjoy the sublime lyrical episodes, such as that about Haydee, which I read yesterday.