Sunday, December 1:
R. writes letters and I fetch him to come and look at pictures I have already discovered in the museum: the Pipers and Drummers of Dürer, splendid! “He was a complete Shakespeare,” says R.
After that a visit to the cathedral. Cold impression; it is the power of the Church which speaks in it, not devoutness of soul. How much do I prefer Strassburg Cathedral! The guides repulsively sugary. We think of the Medusa we saw just before in the museum. “There,” says R., “one has all the ideality of the world, a creature which was never seen and never existed, but which fills us with such dread.”
A table d’hôte lunch, not very pleasant on account of the importunities of the people. Drove out to see the flora and the zoological gardens.
In the evening Die Zauberflöte: appalling. Not a singer of talent, a stupid conductor, and the stamp of vulgarity on everything. Here it is the opulent broker who sets the tone. When R. talks to people about this, they say the audience is such and such. “Don’t talk to me about audiences,” R. replies. “That is a world one does not criticize, but accepts just as it is; the fault lies entirely with the artists. They can seize an audience out purely for entertainment and raise it up. An audience does at least show a lively interest in everything; if a few people turn head over heels, it does at any rate laugh, which means it is better than these pygmies of conductors and producers, who don’t know that, when the Queen of the Night appears, it must be night on the stage: one must put out the lights. Just as in church, when things are done properly, as they seldom are, a soul finds refuge from the petty pressures of its own miseries, is raised above them, and acknowledges the wretchedness of the world, so in the theater the audience is raised up by means of its desire to enjoy itself!”
Various things are said about Herr Hiller, among others that he came running to Herr Lesimple after the first performance of Tannhäuser in Bologna and said, “Now T. has been hissed, too!” R. says, “The curious thing about these people is that they want to play an important role before they have done anything, whereas first they should show what they can do, and then their influence would follow.”
Letter to the children.