Tuesday, July 13:
Supervised Lulu’s piano exercises, then to R., who tells me at breakfast he would like to be able to bequeath Siegfried a house and an income of 1,500 thalers, so that he would never have to work for money and thereby lose his freedom. But he would have to be modest in his wants. [In the margin: “In his will R. wants to stipulate that, if Siegf. works for money, he loses the income.”]
Then he talks to me about Wolfram von Esch[enbach], Gottfried von Strass[burg], whom he calls great artists who attained great mastery. R. works, I with the children, studying, playing, bathing. Wrote to Claire, explained to her why I want the divorce.
After lunch played the piano with R. (Beethoven quartet). He receives a letter from an English lady, who sends him her English translation of Judaism in Music and asks for permission to publish it. Great surprise.
Then R. takes up the Bach motet Als Christus zum Jordan kam; it moves us deeply. “The main thing is to put people at ease, to bring religious meditation companionably close to the heart, and the artist then decorates it further with his skill.” This leads us to R.’s favorite idea of a school where things of this sort will be performed. “Perhaps I shall come to it yet, for after all my life is just beginning.”
In the evening Schopenhauer’s chapter on music; so far as I can follow it, it seems to me to describe the nature of the divine art wonderfully well.
A word by Schop. about Giordano Bruno and his martyrdom fills us with horror, when we think of the fate of this devotee of truth after he was delivered over to the brutal power of the priests. “They would still like to burn people,” R. says, “but it cannot be done.”