I awake this morning from a melancholy dream, utterly shaken and suffering. — I dreamed that, for the sake of the two little girls, I had agreed with R. to remarry Hans; correspondence with the latter, wedding in a white dress edged with bright flowers carried out to the strains…

We talk a lot more about music in the morning—R. goes to his work, I occupy myself with the children but am slightly interrupted by domestic concerns. In the evening Herr Rubinstein brings the pages of the score he has copied, and R. agrees with me that this strange man’s…

R. works and compares himself with Moltke bringing up his battalions, but having always to keep something in reserve; he says, “I am convinced I could conduct Mars la Tour, too.” At lunch he tells me very movingly of a general who in one of these battles hands the flag…

R. dreamed of an audience with the King of Hanover, during which one of the King’s dogs constantly got in the way of his feet and snapped at him when he tried to remove it, though the King kept assuring him, “He won’t hurt you.”  Today he writes the 399th…

At breakfast we discuss the music of yesterday; I tell R. that with regard to myself the curious thing has always been that from the moment music begins to sound, all images, concepts, the whole world of appearances and of the intellect, disappear. He says he has always sought the…

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….