Monday, November 6:
Marie Schleinitz writes and reports that Herr Loser is taking up 60 certificates of patronage for the Wagneriana, as well as responsibility for the engagement of the orchestra for Bayreuth. Letter from my mother. I taught the children, in spite of a very bad night, which I owe to Fidichen. Engaged an Italian teacher.
R. works on Götterdämmerung in the morning, and in the afternoon drafts his fine letter to the Italians. We talk about art, reality, etc., and come to Kabale und Liebe, which R. finds so remarkable because it gives a complete picture of its time; thus far can reality reach in our art. But he adds with a laugh, "The German will always keep his idealism as a hiding place."
In the evening we read in Thucydides the splendid discussion between the Athenians and Melians. "They were too intelligent, those fellows," says R.; "they could not last." "The religion of the saints, that is what I understand best, that one does not claim to be God, but says, 'This is the ideal to which I offer myself up.'" Of the chorus in the second act of Lohengrin: "I wanted in fact to show how a folk song evolves." Herr Pecht sends Shakespeare drawings, which do not give us much pleasure. R. is now laughing about his own present productivity.