Category: November 1874

Fine cold morning in the garden with the children—R. works, groaning, on his monster. In the evening some guests, music is played, Mozart’s D Major Symphony, which R. uses to show the difference between M.’s genius and Haydn’s—how much more greatly Mozart was influenced by ideality. Herr Rubinstein plays us…

We laughed heartily yesterday over a little paper entitled ‘Goethe in Dornburg’, which Prof. Overbeck sent me in connection with a conversation I had with him. —  Worked with Lusch and Loldi; R. on his score. Yesterday Brünnhilde leaped into the flames, today he had some alterations to make and…

R. at his work, I at mine; at eleven he calls me down to show me how the sun is falling on my Lenbach portrait and transfiguring it! R. quotes from “The Knight of Toggenburg[i],” how the knight waits for the loved one to show herself.  He does not go…

I had alarming dreams during the early hours of the morning: I was wandering in the garden of the Luisenstift, and it seemed to me that all the schoolgirls were phantoms; Boni seemed to me to be especially melancholy; I woke up feeling very sad and with a heavy heart….

Poor Boni afflicted with a toothache. I work with Loldi. R. is busily engaged morning and afternoon with his score—he seems to have worked too much on it, for in the evening he is terribly agitated, which causes me concern. — (I pay a few calls.) — Wrote to Frau…

Elder children in church, younger playing around me, then received visitors while R. works. A walk in the afternoon with the children.  In the evening Herr Rubinstein gives us great pleasure by playing [Beethoven’s] Sonata Opus 111.[i]For the first movement he lacks the confidence and boldness of personality, but he…