Monday, December 8:
Last night I heard Lusch moaning in a dream, and I felt as if I were hearing Hans. In the morning I looked back over my life with R. and was full of gratitude to God: how much better my fate than I myself have been! How beautiful Tribschen was, how friendly the King toward us, how good Hans, my children always well, and I think on the whole good, Fidi such a source of hope! How did I come to deserve it all? R. reproaches me with a complete mania for sacrifice and discomfort, but within me is the feeling of never having done enough, the fear of neglecting something; like Melusina I wish only to wait on and care for others. R. is still pleased with my bust. Remain invisible, just protecting, watching, serving! The house and the building on the outskirts lie like a nightmare on my soul. I fear the house will lead us into expenditure beyond our means, and the theater? We hear nothing about the subscriptions.
Tuesday to Saturday, December 9-19. Spent my days in Christmas preparations, constantly sewing dolls' clothes. Received no news from outside, R. working on his score. Read the Euphorion episode, thinking throughout of its stage presentation possibilities. Faust's soliloquy to the cloud splendid, beauty of form, so long sought after and longed for, sinking down utterly into nothingness, leaving only the beauty of the soul behind. Helen could succeed Gretchen, but not outlast her; by remembering her, Faust attains his salvation. Bazaine sentenced to death, the final and most wretched comedy of the war. How pitiful does this nation seem! One play actor after another, and not even for the victim can one feel any sympathy!
I have again to dismiss a thief among the servants, and do it this time without inner agitation. But the servant problem is a worrisome one, what will come of it? The church has no more influence, through its own fault. Yesterday, Friday, R. earnestly reproached Malwida for not having her ward baptized. This was not right, he said; not everyone could fashion his religion for himself, and particularly in childhood one must have a feeling of cohesion. Nor should one be left to choose; rather, it should be possible to say, “You have been christened, you belong through baptism to Christ, now unite yourself once more with him through Holy Communion.” Christening and Communion are indispensable, he said. No amount of knowledge can ever approach the effect of the latter. People who evade religion have a terrible shallowness, and are unable to feel anything at all in a religious spirit.
Fidi very handsome now with his “tousled” hair; R. worried about him, because he seems so sensitive, he feels he should soon have other boys to play with. The two elder girls, having been taken on the ice several times, are now beginning to conduct themselves more expertly on it. Camellias in the conservatory. The little ones play very nicely at acting, Loldi thinks up and sings a dirge for a deceased sister, very solemn, then immediately starts playing the clown. One morning recently we talked again about Titian’s Tribute Money, the picture which lives deepest in my heart: I can still see the facial expression, the movement of the hand, its dying away, mildly pained, contemptuous; it has the same effect on me as music, and how ineffable the painting technique!
(Baron Weichs has died. Archbishop Rudiger is refusing him burial. Dr. Landgraf tells me that someone in the Baden Chamber has said that some of the strands connected with the recognition of the Heckel, the subscription seems to be making very tepid progress! The good man has now written to the theater managements, which is very repugnant to R. R. is very tired of his score, he hopes to have finished the first act by the New Year. He has piled too much on himself, house, theater, score, etc.)
Recently, as we were eating hare for lunch, Lusch asked him whether he had ever hunted. He said yes, once in his youth, on Count Pachta’s estate in Bohemia. He had shot at random, without taking aim, and was told he had hit a running hare in the leg. At the end of the hunt a dog had discovered the poor animal and dragged it out; its cry of fear pierced right through him. “That is your hare,” he was told, and there and then he swore never again to take part in such a sport. The way people had come down from the useful and dangerous hunting of bears and lions to chasing hares, deer, and stags was a shameful degradation of this sport, he said.
In the evening read more Luther, his sermon at the funeral of the Elector Prince powerfully moving; his very remarkable character, naivete, simplicity, graciousness, subtle sharpness, great wisdom, refusal to destroy anything that was not positively evil: “Goethe grew out of him,” says R. “He applied his wisdom to the search for beauty.” “There are no great men without religious feeling.” “Christ is our intermediary, he leads us out of this life.” Recalled Fidi’s baptism with emotion, R. says he will never forget the occasion, how beautiful, how comforting it had been; how earnest the faces of the people who were present. Only in a common faith can people come together like that. Religion is a bond, one cannot have religion by oneself.