Tuesday, May 28:
R. had a good night, and we are glad that we had our merry drive yesterday, for the weather today is cloudy and close. I start work again with the children. R. is once more filling in his sketches in ink, and when I go downstairs to greet him, around lunchtime, he plays me Parsifal’s sorrowful outburst on hearing of his mother’s death, so sorrowful and so tender that Herzeleide’s whole nature is revealed before one’s eyes.
In the afternoon R. does some more work and plays to me Kundry’s words of consolation. I have become immersed in Dante’s Divina commedia and tell R. of the wonderful impression it is making on me. “Oh,” says R., “nobody can be held responsible for his own time, and the horrible scenes are transcended by the poet’s genius.” I tell him that even the horrible scenes do not put me off, they seem to me curiously dreamlike, and I never lose my feeling of being on earth; these physical torments are almost easier to bear than the spiritual strife of Macbeth, for example.
In the evening we read Kenilworth; the description of the feast provokes an outburst from R.: “I cannot bear these Renaissance masquerades! The Romans were better at it, they had criminals sent to Rome from all the provinces and staged a real comedy, that is to say, killed them. But these parades, etc., stem from the Latin world, which still dominates us entirely. The Greeks were different.” R. wanted to amuse himself by sending Prof. Nietzsche a telegram of congratulations on Voltaire’s birthday, but I advise him against it and recommend silence here, as in many other things. When our friends, who were joined by the Jägers, have gone, we feel how much we need to be alone together.
A Dr. Franz from Zabern informs us touchingly of the success of a concert in support of the Society of Patrons and sends us 80 marks.