Friday, June 18:
In the night R. again comes up to me in concern; I was just ringing for a light to be brought, so agitated were my spirits. He gave me the lamp, and now I continued to meditate in its brightness.
I know that only complete sacrifice can assure us peace. I shall never be without worry, for I shall always grieve for the person whom I could not help, or, rather, who could do so little to help himself. Were I to sacrifice only myself, even though it be to utterly no avail, how willingly should I do it, yet thus my thoughts spin on and on until in the morning I fell wearily asleep.
Spent the morning in bed with the Eckermann Conversations, much edification from them. So great a being as G. remains an inexhaustible source of consolation.
At lunch the ungrateful spite of a manservant produces a significant conversation. R. says one needs just as much Christian love to receive kindness as to show it; the subordinate asks himself: Why can I also not harbor these feelings, why can I not dispense alms? The unity of all Nature is expressed in the feelings of the poor person: I am a suffering mortal like you, we are equal. And this unconscious instinct for equality in turn creates the insuperable division. Only a saint, who does not dispense alms but turns himself into a poor person, a prisoner, can set this division aside. He says it was Alberich who made him profoundly aware of this mental condition.
Today R. has been rereading his essay What Is German?, and is very pleased with it. But what a severe judgment on the young King rises from it!
After lunch R. reads me some scenes from Antigone; that is the truly incomparable par excellence. But my head is very weak. It is as if I had not yet quite woken up out of a bad dream, and I fear it will remain like this my whole life through.
When I yesterday, being very tired, gave in to my feelings, I reproached myself afterward severely: nothing, no suffering and no trial, must be allowed to make me forget my duty, which is to make R.’s days pleasant. I impressed this firmly on my mind during the night, and it must be my mainstay.
In the evening letters from Lulu and Hermine. I write to both, also to Richter. In the evening I am very weak.