Saturday, December 6:
Letter to me from Councilor DiiHipp: the chapter of the Order of Maximilian has elected R. a member, and the King wants to know whether R. considers this a favor. They already elected R. 9 years ago, but he, deliberately misinformed by Pfistermeister, and not knowing that members are elected by a chapter, refused the decoration. It caused much bad blood at the time, for they felt themselves to have been deliberately slighted. It is curious that they have come again now, and they cannot very well be refused, although this is very repugnant to R., or, rather, very unimportant. I, on the other hand, receive anonymous packages from Munich, on fraud, mental illnesses, etc. - the strange foolishness of rage!
In the evening R. again tries to read Freytag to us, but it is of no avail. R. says: “How different when J. Grimm or Uhland speaks about these things - how one feels the truth of it all! This book gives one the feeling that it has already been chewed over before.” We take up Goethe’s Faust, Part Two, the Walpurgisnacht, to our utter delight, all of it divine and so eloquent, reflecting so completely our own outlook on the world. At table R. had already - in connection with a collection of Franconian folk songs - touched on the theme of what it behooved us to do: to listen to Nature from the viewpoint of a culture which has lost its naivete. The Homunculus, demanding birth, R. sees as the German spirit, which must turn from the scholar’s study to Nature. For me there is a word of truth in every line, and at the same time it is all so vital, one lives it all; it is splendid for both ignorant and knowledgeable alike, for it fulfills the former and delights the latter.
Afterward R. again plays our beloved Egmont music; we are charmed by Klärchen’s song, “Welch Glück ohne Gleich” - just the ending, the cadence, we find terrible - it fits the words so ridiculously.