Saturday, January 7:
I had a sleepless, feverish night; R. came to me and told me that I had no idea what I meant to him, I had given him what he could not give me, I had made him the gift of his present life. The foehn has produced fine weather; the sun-drenched earth glistens beneath a clear sky.
R. and I drive into town. At lunch R. notices that Richter is absent-minded and believes he wishes he were already in Pest.
"I myself," says R., "am quite resigned, I am ready to give up everything at once. There is just one thing which must not be touched, but otherwise, if someone were to say to me, 'Here is a piece of property, here you may live with your wife and children, but you must never again listen to a note of your works,' I should accept the bargain at once. What do I get from performances except exertion and trouble, and just the satisfaction that nothing has gone wrong? But it leaves no impression."
"My things give me pleasure only up to the first working out in ink, when the nebulous penciled ideas suddenly emerge clearly and distinctly before my eyes. Even the instrumentation belongs too much to the outside world. One just gets too wearied by it. This English offer yesterday, for instance, of course I ought to be pleased, for an Englishman will certainly do things seriously and precisely, but it leaves me indifferent. Am I to feel pleased because things I wrote twenty years ago are now being noticed, when I have gone far beyond them, taking one step forward and two back? I have been much too battered around for that."
Letter to Klindworth.