Thursday, July 6:
Wild night; I am troubled by wretched thoughts about Hans, how he is getting on. I wrote yesterday to M. Meysenbug to find out. How heavy one’s heart always is. But R. slept well. “The devil of composition” is tormenting him, for he finds that he expended too much on the first oath, Hagen, Gunther, Siegfried, and intends to transfer the orchestral interludes to the oath in the second act and compose something new, an experience quite new to him.
We talk about the biography; he says he is curious as to how Paris, 1860-61, will come out in retrospect. “How insane it all was! That production of Tannhäuser and my domestic life! But my whole life has been thus, an insane dream up to the moment of understanding between us. Every association, every business arrangement, every conversation; I saw myself constantly as if I were walking in my sleep, and every minute I asked myself, ‘Why don’t you throw the whole thing away?’”
Family lunch, then a walk, and in the evening the War of Succession with much interest and enjoyment. When we returned home from our walk, R. said, “I have something for you,” and drew a heavily wrapped book from his pocket. It was the Tribschen Pamphlets for Frau Cosima, for “You must always have something the others do not have.” The splendid, kind man. Dr. Heckel writes that a fifth certificate of patronage has been almost subscribed.