Thursday, August 29:
Letter from Herr Schäfer: the concert in Munich has brought in 1,400 florins!
Renewed discussion with R. about the Weimar visit; he becomes angry, and I ask him not to talk of it again. At noon he tells me he felt the urge to come to me, take me in his arms, and tell me that I should go to Weimar and that he would come to fetch me. This seems to me a good solution, but since at family lunch R. remarks ironically, regarding this journey, “Yes, one must play at diplomacy,” etc., I again beg him to think no more of the matter, we shall simply let it rest.
[Here the page is smudged, with the remark: “Fidi’s doing!”]
He resolves then to write to my father himself, which he does at once, declaring our readiness to visit him, but demanding a word from him, then touching on the episode of the visit of his friend, Frau v. Meyendorff. The letter is wonderful and clears up the situation at once.
With the children to the Schweizerei, R. meets us there; home through the woods, Fidi: “But, Mama, this is a funny path.”
In the evening our good Josef R., whom we find a little tiresome. We read Schlegel’s conversations about language; when I single out what he says about Homer’s simplicity, R. remarks, “Times are sad when one has to write about such things. If our theater were blooming, I should certainly not be writing about actors and singers.”
He remarks how Goethe and Schiller were distracted from their true work as poets by their critical investigations; Elpenor, Die Braut von Messina were the outcome of this period, significant in cultural history, but artistically unproductive, and it lasted until Schiller decided to become exclusively a dramatist and Goethe returned to his Faust, which he did not rate particularly high aesthetically. “Music is the only naive art, up to Mendelssohn. Beethoven did not ponder over the nature of the symphony.”