Wednesday, June 23:
In bed! R. with his sketches; I get up, but soon have to lie down again. As I was playing with the feather on my bed, R. said, “King Lear,” and, since I could not remember the place, he fetched the play and read me the scene in which Lear comes in with his dead daughter in his arms. How terrible the effect of this one single scene!
“When one recalls the conventionality of speech in certain Italian and Spanish poets, how startled one is by the directness here; one sees that Sh. must have been a Protestant.” Concerning Gozzi, R. said it struck him as very significant that he had started out from the well-known acting talent of the Italians. To what levels things in Italy had now fallen could be seen in the fact that drama is banished from all the big theaters and only opera flourishes.
In the evening R. brings me a theater journal containing a nice article about Hans. I should like to write, but am too tired.