Thursday, October 26:
Work with the children while the olive harvest is going on, with its attendant yodeling; the people here just warble like birds. Yesterday R. woke me up with a lovely improvisation; I should like to persuade him to forget all the Nibelungen troubles and to start on a new work. He was thinking again recently about a symphony of mourning for those who fell in the war, in which he would use his Romeo and Juliet theme. He saw the coffins being brought into a hall, more and more of them, so that individual grief was gradually...
But who shares his feelings? A wonderful drive in the afternoon: we visited all the grottoes between Meta and Sorrento, thinking of Dante and Doré; a splendid sky, the island lying blissfully before us in a golden light, Vesuvius with the villages on its slopes, reddish-gray and brownish-gold, somberly threatening. From Meta, home on foot, a long walk in the moonlight; everything looked wonderful, the houses as much as the gardens with their tall stone-pines, those aristocrats among trees. In the evening we are indeed somewhat tired, but in splendid spirits. I feel as if life has granted me a respite here!