Sunday, March 24:
Between the pages of this entry, which was incorrectly dated March 26, is a sheet of paper bearing the words: “March 26, taken in the night / Seidlitz powder / bicarbonate of soda / valerian 1 / valerian 2 / Karlsbad salt / castor oil / red wine / opium.”
R. did not have a very good night. But he is cheerful at breakfast, and we talk again about Sch.’s letters; R. is pleased that he once revealed a similar streak of firmness toward Schott: “One feels so annoyed that these people always take one to be a fool.” While undressing last night he sang something from Figaro (last act, the scene between Figaro and Susanna, when F. has recognized her beneath her mask), and he tells me he usually sings this when he is undressing, particularly the arabesque which briefly interrupts the melody: “Oh, it’s glorious! But it belongs to one particular style and time; it is the masque, and it couldn’t be done more fittingly.”
Recently we spoke of Herr v. Hülsen. “‘You are - senator’ - that’s what one should say to him,” R. observes.
R. works. Snow flurries, but sunshine between, “Loge’s flakes” fall on us gently, as in a dream, during our walk, happy feelings as we part, he to talk business with friend Wolzogen, I to read with the children, and he says, embracing me, “This cannot pass!”
Friend Wolzogen informs him that the significant Jewish voice, a rabbi from Bucovina, is a quasi-papal authority named Friedmann; R. finds the German name and the importance Israel attaches to German culture very remarkable.
Minister shortage in Berlin!
R. says, “If somebody of power and rank were now to reproach Bismarck proudly for his mistakes, what would he say in reply?”
In the evening R. feels the desire to play the graceful second theme of Beethoven’s F Major Symphony; he plays a part of the finale in the piano-duet arrangement. Continued with the Schopenhauer biography; the episode with the seamstress, it reminds one of Beethoven’s relationship with his housekeeper - a sad world that shows a genius in such a light!
During a pause in our reading R. says: “Creation is everything; fame is like an oyster shell. I find no pleasure in my things except in the moment of creation. Take the scene between Klingsor and Kundry, for instance - I have no wish to go through it again, it is all strange to me already.”
In parting I tell R. that Schopenhauer was after all not entirely right about happiness: there is such a thing. “Yes,” says R. with a smile, “but we are just a very small exception and almost unique - you can’t build universal rules on that.” He also said, “I am in the 3rd phase of my life; in the first, people from other times, like Bierey, still figured; the second was horrible, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn.”