The new chambermaid installed. Much reckoning and arranging. R. in more cheerful humour, recalls the Meistersinger and says he cannot comprehend whence he drew the mood for that geniality, though, indeed, he does comprehend it!—He once more expresses his aversion to lyric poetry; when I remind him that he did, after all, compose the poem “An Dich” [1], he replies: ‘Oh, those are catastrophes—that is no lyric, such things are not to be printed.’—In the evening again reading San Marte.
[1] Poem “An Dich” (in English, “To Thee” or “To You”), a poem in seven stanzas by RW, October 1, 1864, kept in the RW Memorial in Bayreuth.
Revised English translation by Jo Cousins.