Sunday, March 23:
Today we are celebrating Boni’s birthday. Hans has sent her a book; Frau Ritter wrote that he had stayed a while in Würzburg, tired from his many journeys; he is going to Karlsruhe to give three concerts for Bayreuth under the sponsorship of the Grand Duke, then to London.
Fritzsch announces in his periodical the start of a new literary supplement, which R. finds very remarkable, the first indication that his ideas might be realized! Also the fact that among other things Herr Tappert castigates journalists for the way they mishandle the German language pleases R., he sees it as at least a small shadow cast by him.
R. glances at Shakespeare’s Macbeth and is greatly affected by the very first line he reads: Macbeth’s aside when the first confirmation, that he is Thane of Cawdor, comes, and they end, “And nothing is but what is not.” “Those are the naked words of feeling which arise in such a breast; the poet grasps the feeling and then finds the words for it, which are consequently right and natural, even when a person does not himself find any.” Schiller’s translation shows that he did not grasp the feeling.
I asked R. whether the news of Goethe’s death had not shattered him in his youth; he says that his uncle had been very upset by it, but he himself had not really known very much about Goethe, or, to put it more accurately, had fallen among the scribblers! Schiller, he says, did a tremendous amount to spoil Goethe for him with Die Räuber, Fiesco, Kabale und Liebe; he had found Elective Affinities boring, and regarded the popular scenes in Egmont as mere imitations of Shakespeare. That is how one is in one’s youth.
All sorts of letters, from London one which makes us decide not to go there, despite the theatrical organization which wants to arrange everything according to R.’s ideas! Splendid spring weather; I go for a walk with R. up to the theater, slow work, strange thoughts! “Not a plank in it,” says R., “which national feeling has brought me, only personal sympathy, and a kind of blackmail arising from this.” In the evening, dictation, this time happily, in cheerful spirits.