Wednesday, August 14:
Visit from our good dean, who always brings us joy; he agrees to hold the christening in Frau Svendsen’s house. In the afternoon continuation of the third act; overwhelming impression.
I come to realize that all the characters invented by a true poet are enigmas, like the figures in the pictures of the great masters; it is as if the poet above all sees his characters, and language is only an inadequate tool with which to reproduce them exactly as he sees them. He sees them walking, standing, acting, suffering, but he does not really know their motives, and thus he stands above the law of cause and effect.
The reason why the French write better plays than the Germans, the mediocre ones, is because, though a French writer also may not see his characters from the inside, he does at least have before his eyes living actors, for whom he shapes his things. Our modern German writers, on the other hand, who get everything from books, see their characters from neither the inside nor the outside; nor are there any enigmas in their works. It is all shallowness, clear but at the same time insipid.
In the evening our watchman annoys us by telling us that our house will be very damp. R. says, “How people love telling one unpleasant things!” I understand why: in this way they save themselves from feeling envy.
R. is now enjoying reading A. W. Schlegel’s critical essays. Great joy in Fidi’s kindness of heart. Arrival of the medallion for the King.
While we are talking about Josef Rubinstein’s piano playing, R. says how curious it is that Jews seem neither to recognize nor to play any themes; he recalls that Levy in Dresden, not the Viennese one, played through the whole of the Holländer without recognizing the Dutchman’s theme.