Friday, October 17:
I write to my father, leaving to him the decision whether I go to Pest or not. R. works and says that if he continues with the score as he is now doing, it will never be finished. Yesterday he spoke to me about the English horn, which he is using to express Gutrune’s Tannhäuser for the first time, and wishes to express thanks for the overwhelming impression.
“I must build on the younger generations for the sake of Fidi’s royalties,” R. says.
I do not remember what it was that caused R. to remark that there are no rectangles in Nature, and that quadrature is the form specifically needed by the human intellect to express certain things. When I was walking today with the children under our veranda, which has no greenery covering it, I noticed how beautiful, how idealized the landscape looked through the red pillars, and I was forced to conclude that art lies in the framing, in limitation.
Walk through the meadows with R. and the children, saw the theater in all its glory, then to the house, where much vexation, as usual. In the evening Baron Thon with his wife and the poor dean, who is worn out completely by the synod and its deliberate hardness of hearing. The banker Haymann is discussed; Baron Thon fears a design on royalties. R. again becomes angry, since the dean rather stupidly dismisses his situation and his torments as if they were something quite normal.