Tuesday, March 12:
Somewhat indisposed; R. claims it is the dancing exercises I give the children which so wear me out, he says I am making him hate the idea of duty! He works, and toward noon plays me the splendid death symphony. “That is his heroic ode, thus will he and his ancestors be sung in later times.” “Siegfried lives entirely in the present, he is the hero, the finest gift of the will.”
When we come down, we find the plans of our house, to our great joy. R. goes out alone and brings me a letter from Richard Pohl, who has seen Hans in Mannheim, where he was giving his 40th concert; he was friendly and in good spirits; he is giving a concert every day and sleeps in the train. This alarms me greatly. In the evening we read Romeo and Juliet - Romeo as the spirit of death entering the house with a flaming torch, his love for Rosaline a kind of premonition of a terrible fate, Mercutio’s being snatched away a symbol of the evanescence of life, all of it incomprehensible, inexplicably truthful, the magic of a dramatist!