Thursday, March 20:
We have a poor live capon, kept in captivity, and every night it mournfully heralds the arrival of day; it wakes me, and its sad tones speak to me of the misery of life. Whoever in youth could understand such tones, how could he forbear turning his back on life and seeking salvation in resignation and atonement?
Herr Strauss’s The Old and New Faith has reached its fifth edition, in a single year, I believe. “What does he mean by new faith?” says R. “Where does he get that word, for he certainly does not mean by it respect for the incomprehensibility of great men.”
Letter from my father. Loldi in bed on account of a small abscess. R. busy with the parts for Hagen. We go out together and tell the mayor about our concern for the bookbinder’s assistant; terrible state of the district of Nordhalben, wretched condition of the people everywhere, strikes! A man says to me: “I have enough for myself and I spend it in the Sonne. The community takes care of my family.” The laws are made by journalists and lawyers, if all looks humanitarian, but it is barbarous. The people sink lower and lower, the churches empty in favor of the taverns. The land, sucked dry by its previous rulers, is left by their successors in the condition to which their predecessors brought it!
The motto at breakfast this morning was Mephisto’s: “My pathos would cause thee laughter, hadst thou not forgotten how to laugh.” R. finds the treatment of God absolutely unique, and says, “Faust ought to be regarded as the new Bible; everybody should know all its verses by heart.”
The Thursday gathering in our house this evening; I stay upstairs and write to Malwida Meysenbug regarding her move here. R. is not dissatisfied with the conversation with his friends; they discussed Strauss’s book. At the antiquarian’s I bought an old glass painting, which I find pretty. Sent off the two pictures of my father and R. to Lenbach for the World’s Fair.