Prof. Overbeck[i], whose visit we heartily welcome, tells us about a publisher, Schmeitzner, who is just opening business in Chemnitz, and whom he likes very much. R. has the idea that he might move here and use Bayreuth as his firm’s address. Heard dismal things about the situation of our…
A succession of visits keeps me from writing in my diary. Friend Klindworth completed the piano arrangement and left on Friday[i] the 14th, on the following day Prof. N. departed, having caused R. many difficult hours. Among other things, he maintains that the German language gives him no pleasure, and he…
Fine weather, a walk with R. in the palace gardens, after breakfast everybody to work—I with Lusch, R. to his score, friend Klindworth to his arrangement. After lunch talked a lot about Greek history, the vices and abominations of Sparta, the ignorance of the philosophers who took Sparta as an…
Breakfast with our friends in the summerhouse, conversation about Berlioz: according to R., his works could be played in open-air concerts, to which the whole cultured world would flock, but they are not easy to fit into concerts at which Mozart and Beethoven are played. The Germans rightly resist such…
In the afternoon a note tells us that Prof. Nietzsche is here, but lying ill in his hotel, the Sonne. R. goes there and brings him back to our house at once. He soon recovers, and we spend a cheerful evening together. But what he tells us about the newspapers…
Will the ships go to Spain? That is the present political question. Besides that, the Bishop of Cologne is being sent to prison. A very curious situation—I fear a general conflagration against North Germany. In the afternoon, while waiting for friend Klindworth, R. plays passages from Isouard’s Cendrillon and tells…
