Friday, March 17:
Full of snow! R. working on The Destiny of Opera. The five children coughing, I in their room.
Great sorrow over Lulu's having carelessly lost the letter R. once wrote to her; I chide her sharply for her untidiness and negligence, then regret it. In the evening I go upstairs to listen for whether she is sleeping or coughing. She is not coughing.
Feelings of gratitude to God; acknowledgment that my good fortune is much, much greater than anything I have done to deserve it, utter identification of all pain with my need to atone. R. comes upon me thus and asks whether I have moods of which he knows nothing.
Some martial songs arrived yesterday; we thought they came from a soldier, and they were not very good. Then we found out that they were by Heinrich Dorn, and the utter lack of taste disgusted us; when the folk style is imitated, only rubbish emerges. "They falsify everything nowadays," R. says.
In the evening discussed Bayreuth again. At lunch R. says, "A poet must be a prophet and a singer."