Monday, February 17:
Eva's birthday. Today, too, she is greeted with the master melody to which she was born. I remind R. how at her birth he whispered in my ear, “I have never loved before.” He replies, “Whoever loves you has never loved before.” Recently, when after a day of vexations for R. we fell into each other's arms, he said to me in the evening, “I understand now how one can die for love; I believe the full power of love is felt only when one is my age. Today, when I was holding you, I was close to losing consciousness.”
I cannot tell him how much I love him, and I suffer in consequence; in this case one must just act, for one cannot describe one's state of being to another. The children are invited, running through the new house. R. is unfortunately still much weighed down by corrections. If only Richter were here! Read Gibbon in the evening. Before that R. reads me from Freytag's book a passage about the itinerant people, with whom he associates Luther. “The writer of the Nibelungenlied must certainly have been that sort of itinerant, a genius,” says R., “for the theme he sang about was utterly despised at that time, and it was especially hated by the clergy on account of its old heathen flavor. What would we know about Shakespeare, for example, but for the art of printing?”