Wednesday, April 8:
A new governess! May God give His blessing! R. teaches her the latest prayer for Fidi: “Dear God, tomorrow it would be nice if you could give me the largest slice!”
R. goes to the house, I with him; he takes a bath but does not feel very well after it. After lunch he sings a melody from a Beethoven quartet and says: “Beethoven is the best of them all, because he has beauty. There are really only two forms of art, sculpture and music, the latter infinitely greater than the former, because it owes nothing to the realities of life. Literature one can’t really acknowledge as an art form; Goethe, who thought himself born to be a sculptor, felt that, and that is why he did not balk at making those terrible alterations in Romeo and Juliet.”
News of Kaulbach’s death - a false deity already discredited.
In the evening R. reads to me from Schopenhauer’s comment on his own philosophy and the opening pages of Finlay’s history of Greece. The latter very interesting - every contact with the genius of Greece grips and uplifts one. R. is particularly pleased with the appreciation of Alexander.