Friday, June 16:
Yesterday evening, a nice letter from Malwida M. Warm and sultry day, foehn approaching; R. is very oppressed by it. Besides teaching the children, I draft a letter to Baron Schack about his writings. Disagreeable letter from Karl Tausig; the conference in Weimar seems to have been unfruitful.
In the garden Goethe’s line “All transient things are but an image” comes into my mind, and that leads us to talk of Faust, Part Two, “which does indeed belong on a stage, but a stage one cannot envisage.” “The world of appearances, that is what is transient; inadequacy, shown here in action, that is what life shows us; the unseeable, that is what the drama sets out to reveal to us. And all this,” R. continues, “in the tone of a mystical medieval saying, like something from Jakob Böhme; the coloring of Faust is retained throughout.”
In the afternoon we read together A Communication to My Friends. The evening brought an inquiry from the publisher Fürstner whether “Der Tannenbaum” might not be dedicated to Betz. R. says no at my request; we then laugh over the high payment he has received for this one song. “I remember that in my early Paris days I was always being told about Demoiselle Loïsa Puget, who received 500 francs for each of her songs; now in my 59th year I have also achieved that.”