Thursday, September 19:
R. had a better night, but he has a headache and is feeling despondent. “You alone keep me going. If I had not found you, what urge would I have had to do anything? Disgust would have defeated me. People knew instinctively that I would do no more, and I felt the same. And it is pitiful, too, what I have achieved; nobody really listens to me. If only I were to be asked, even once, by someone high up for my views on the reform of the theater, but being completely ignored like this! All our best minds are turning to the world of machines, the sons of good families are becoming engineers and emigrating to America whenever they can, and those who stay behind and devote themselves to science are unintelligent.”
However, he takes pleasure in Fidi and says he would like to know if he was like that as a child. “Yes, one has to do everything for oneself; we had to make Fidi for ourselves.”
Wet weather. I write off for Delikatessen; R. makes his corrections. He knows that all great men have felt as he does. “Goethe kept himself going with his scientific loves.” My father wrote to him yesterday to thank him for the dedication in the style of Hans Sachs.
He goes into town, I with the children to the Schweizerei, where the rain surprises us. Georg, coming from town, overtakes us; he has with him the photographs sent by Brückwald and a letter from Marie Schleinitz, reporting that the Sultan is taking ten certificates of patronage, a piece of news which gives R. little pleasure, since it wounds the pride of our German enterprise.
R. returns home rather late, but we are still able to read a little of Görres’s preface, which, particularly since it is completely new to me, I find extremely gripping. A wet day ends nicely with moonlight.