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 to his captain of cavalry before dying, but still utters the cry, “Long live the King!” — He finds pleasure, indeed comfort, in the organization of the army, tells me about how the ordinary ranks salute the officers in Angermann’s, standing stiff and straight, and how an officer then sits down together with the men. Also about a conversation between two officers: “Good day, fellow countryman.” “Where have you been? Surely on duty.” Decorum and freedom are both observed. —
I find R. reading Oedipus in the evening, after his work, comparing the translation with the text. “It is like a Persian carpet,” he says, “a torrent of beauty—now vanished forever: we are barbarians.” We then come to the Oresteia, the scene of Cassandra with the chorus, and R. declares it to be the most perfect thing mortal art has ever produced. In the evening went through Beethoven’s Second Symphony and the first movement of the Hammerklavier Sonata. Of the latter R. says he knows of no symphonic movement, with the exception perhaps of the first movement of the Eroica, that is more effectively carried out; it seems like a play of the most tremendous imagination, containing everything—longing, pain, joy, everything. (In Paris a battle at a Pasdeloup concert over the Tristan Prelude, victory for the Wagnerians.)