Friday, April 3:
Good Friday. To church with the children; returning home, I suggest to R. that he walk to the theater with us. Since he feels too unwell to work, we ascend the hill, which is also a Mount Calvary for us. In the afternoon drove to the Fantaisie to see the hens, the Duke having promised to give us some. A fine day, happy mood (on the theater hill we saw the little Parzival flowers from the Griitli, memories of those solemn and momentous days).
In the morning, as I set out for church, R. saw me off with the words, “Give your Saviour my greetings, even if from the very beginning up to the dean he has caused a lot of confusion.”
In the evening we finish Euripides’s Iphigenia; even its moment of beauty, the raising of Iphigenia, does not touch us - all feeling in it is killed by speech and explanations. Oh, Shakespeare! ... melancholy one from our friend Nietzsche, who is tormenting himself. R. exclaims, “He should either marry or write an opera, though doubtless the latter would be such that it would never get produced, and so would not bring him into contact with life.”
I go to the house and then pay some calls; R. takes his first bath in the house and feels so good in it and so well after it that he comes home a different man. A cheerful lunch in consequence, happy enjoyment of what we are to have in each other! In the afternoon to the house, arrival of the “Kauders,” the children’s laughter, much merriment.
In the evening I read R. poor Frau v. M[eyendorff]’s letter, which brings the conversation to my father. Then we read some of the Indian proverbs, feeling ever more deeply this curious link between the highest world-renouncing wisdom and the acutest perception of life.