R. wanted to work today, but he had given his last page to the copyists, who are now living in the theater, and he takes a walk there. The young people are freezing, but are proud of consecrating the building! —
In the afternoon R. reminded me that I had always wished him to christen the house, and now he had a name for it — “Wahnfriedheim.” There was a place called Wahnfried in Hesse, he said, and this juxtaposition of the two words had always touched him, it was so mystical. “And like that poem of Goethe’s addressed exclusively to the wise, here, too, it is only thoughtful people who would divine what we understand by it.” —
We drink our afternoon coffee in the hall, which is very resonant. Yesterday the children sang the Kose- md Kosenlied and “Freude schoner Gotterfmken” down to us from the gallery as we sat below, with very moving effect. — Early this morning R. said to me: “I regret very much not being able to show you my symphony. Mendelssohn probably destroyed it—it’s possible that it revealed to him certain things which he found impleasant.”
In the evening J. Caesar again. The children’s first bath; much laughter. Apart from that, still a lot of work arranging things.
*Wanfried (wanfried.de)