Tuesday, November 18:
R. makes plans for a journey to Munich to speak with Councilor Dufflipp, since he does not reply. R. is finding work very difficult because of his constant preoccupations. I try to order things, fearing that here, too, we might go beyond our resources. I know of no deprivation which I could not bear more lightly than this worry! Luckily my intellectual interests always intervene and make me forget my worries at once.
Thus, since I am reading the history of the Crusades with Daniella, I talked with R. about the 90-year Latin Empire in Constantinople and asked him to consider buying Villehardouin for his library; he takes up the idea and talks about the great significance of this story, observing that it was here that the marriage between Faust and Helen took place. We then speak about Louis IX of France, his greatness and his limitations. “Yes,” says R., “that was France’s lovable, productive period. It is full of characteristics which present them in a lovable light, but they lacked wisdom, restraint; all their virtues were tinged with levity.”
Yesterday a picture of the new fashions arrived, and we were appalled by their depravity, as if the complete woman were only to be seen from behind, when one turns around to look at her! Much disgust with the nation which invents such things, and shame for the nation which imitates them.
In the evening Luther’s Marriage, very fine; R. returns again and again to his idea of a comedy on the subject. “One must have seen Dürer’s women (in Bamberg) to understand these marriages. Certainly there is nothing in them of the searing love which devours the man, as in Tristan, or in Antony and Cleopatra, where we have the additional knowledge that the woman is bad. It is this love which Brünnhilde exalts, and it was very remarkable that in the middle of my work on the Nibelungen I felt the need to deal exhaustively with this one aspect, which could not be dealt with fully in my huge poem, and so I worked out Tristan. All of it subconscious, just always driven on. Among the Rhinemaidens love is just a phenomenon of Nature, to which it returns in the end, after, however, having been turned through Brünnhilde into a world-destroying, world-redeeming force.”
We also talked again about Die Jungfrau von Orleans; her dread of her actions, far transcending her female propensities, should be felt and expressed by her before the encounter with Lionel, and here too much is asked of even the greatest tragedienne. Lionel must also be too noble in appearance, too much is left to chance. This more or less our conversation, after which R. plays me some of the Egmont music and then reads me the scenes of Käthchen’s misery and death. Who will ever hear it as he read it? “Already I walk in Elysian fields” so simple and so heart-rending! Brackenburg’s monologue helps us over our tears; we smile and are able to talk about the play again.
Malwida did not come, which worries me and makes me fear that she will soon have to leave us on account of her health. Melancholy dream of Hans. Recall with R. earlier difficult times. It is now five years since I came to him. He declares that the next morning I said to him, “Now start on Siegfried.” He goes to see Herr Feustel and confirms his departure tomorrow, just in order to demonstrate that he fears no disturbance, but without a shred of hope!
In the evening read Luther and finished Meurer’s first volume. In Audin’s Jesuitical Life of Luther we read the chapter on Katharina von Bora and are appalled by its meanness and triviality. Audin draws his view of this very simple and uncomplicated relationship from scurrilous songs and cartoons, as if one were later to base an account of R.’s life on contemporary newspaper reports!