Tuesday, July 18:
Yesterday evening R. gave Eva a grave lecture about the importance of not tormenting animals; I hope it will have an effect. R. works; before lunch, when I go to greet him, he says: “How easy it would be if I could just write arias and duets! Now everything has to be a little musical portrait, but it must not interrupt the flow; I’d like to see anybody else do that!”
After lunch he plays the third act of Siegfried to me, wonderful beyond all words. He shows me the harp sounds he has added in Brünnhilde’s greeting to Siegfried, like the harps of the skalds when they welcome a hero in Valhalla. These sounds are to be heard again at Siegfried’s death. A profound, indescribable impression; a wooing of the utmost beauty; Siegfried’s fear, the fear of guilt through love, Brünnhilde’s fear a premonition of the approaching doom; her virginal and pure love for Siegfried truly German.
I try to imagine which people would be able to appreciate such things; my father, and also Tausig, come to mind. Friedrich returns from the post office and brings me a letter from Countess Krockow: she is in the Leipzig hospital with Tausig, who is dying of typhus. A great shock. Even if he recovers, he is in any case lost to our undertaking; what a lesson to us.
To us his death seems to have a metaphysical basis: a poor character, worn out early, one with no real faith, who, however close events brought us, was always conscious of an alien element, the Jewish. He threw himself into Bayreuth with a real frenzy, but can this outward activity help him? He is too gifted not to be weary of life.
“I have no further wish to live in the world,” R. says. “Now I have you, all I want is to care for the children and just look on; for no matter what one puts a hand to, ghosts arise. The Flying Dutchman was nothing compared to me.” I tell him how happy we are in our solitude; I, for instance, should be quite unable to bear life in the world any longer. “Yes,” says R., “it was a stroke of genius on my part when I cabled you from here, ‘Casting anchor every seven years, I shall be united with you here.’ No, to go along with the world, share its interests, etc., I can no longer do that.”
We walk in the sultry darkness into town to take my letter to Countess Krockow to the post office. Will it find Tausig still alive? R. says physically he is like a cat; perhaps he will recover. Late in the evening read Frederick the Great, whose character captivates us with both joy and sorrow. A year since the declaration of war.