Thursday, July 11:
Minister Schleinitz sends Lulu a nice assortment of seals; I thank him at once and write other letters, too. R. receives a not-very-successful medallion of Schubert. He works.
After lunch R. visits the Svendsens, to ask whether he could undertake the copying for the King. Then we go for a walk. R. says: “How pleasant is literary work! Once a book is done, carefully corrected, and published, it is there, however much it may be criticized, and gives one pleasure. But a score, that might as well not exist until it has been performed. And with these works of mine I am addressing the most grotesque section of the public, a theater audience!”
The goings-on in the world, into which the visit of our friend gave us an insight, disgust us to the depths of our souls: “The only salvation is to take refuge in the regions of august ancestors,” says R.
Just as we read no newspapers, we resolve quite seriously to see as few people as possible, except in connection with our task. What, for example, has come out of R.’s so well-meaning invitation to my father? “The devil’s own mess; let it be a lesson to us!”
In the evening, Gibbon.