Friday, March 21:
The Lucerne Am Rhyn affair not too upsetting, after all. I spent the morning downstairs with the children, since Loldi has to stay in bed. R. prepares his ninth volume.
During lunch a telegram comes from Mme Lucca, saying that Lohengrin has triumphed against great opposition in Milan and the second performance will take place tomorrow. Went out with R.; we separate, he goes to Herr Feustel’s, and learns that many certificates of patronage have been ordered from Mainz, where a large movement is beginning to emerge!
In the evening chance puts some essays by Carlyle about Goethe and Schiller into our hands, and we are edified to read his fine words of praise for Goethe, uttered on the very eve of his death. Carlyle’s words on how little one really knows about great men and in what a shadowy guise they appear to posterity make me think of these diaries, in which I want to convey the essence of R. to my children with all possible clarity, and in consequence try to set down every word he speaks, even about myself, forgetting all modesty, so that the picture is kept intact for them. Yet I feel the attempt is failing: how can I convey the sound of his voice, the intonations, his movements, and the expression in his eyes? But perhaps it is better than nothing, and so I shall continue with my bungling efforts.
I am much moved by the praise for Goethe, which also fits R. like a glove, the genuineness, the truth, the courage, the kindness, the prophetic powers. R. likes Carlyle; he says that despite his many banalities and completely unphilosophic mind one recognizes in him a man of original ideas with a feeling for the genuine and the great. He thinks for a moment of sending Carlyle his Beethoven. In his analysis of the soul Strauss shows complete ignorance of the basic conceptions of philosophy. Strauss probably an Israelite.