Wednesday, June 12:
R.’s night was not completely undisturbed, but he managed not to get out of bed. He begins his cure (Marienbad waters) and intends to interrupt his work; he has got as far as “O Qual der Liebe” [“Oh, pang of love”].
He talks about the subject which is now occupying him and remarks how through this God characters such as the Maid of Orleans and Parsifal were deprived forever of sensual urges by a great impression made on them in their adolescent years. He believes that in this way Christianity could be preached to the world with renewed purity and truth; all the material for its elucidation can be found in Schopenhauer. We then laugh about the Schopenhauerian “donkeys” Humboldt (R. says he, too, has never been able to read Cosmos to the end) and Helmholtz - “that’s how he always seemed to me.”
When I tell him I can never understand how certain people can find enjoyment in certain books, such as the History of Materialism, for instance, he says, “Basically they are ignoramuses who think that knowledge comes with a bang.”
R. says goodbye to Loulou: “She looked at me exactly as her father used to.” Tender and melancholy parting from my child, who is going to her relations in England. But my thoughts are dominated by my concern that R. get well.
At supper R. sings the melody from the wedding chorus in Cherubini’s Médée and observes what power this unique composer achieved through his command of proportions, as for example in the Credo of the Mass in D Minor, which is magnificent; Cherubini, he says, occupies a place of his own, for he wrote solidly, cleanly, whereas in Spontini, for instance, there were already too many frills.
A visit in the evening from our poor friend Hagen, who, in reply to my calm questioning, seriously maintains that a fourth-dimensional being is upsetting his mind. R. tries to convince him that everything happens inside us and there are no attacks from outside, but I fear it is in vain. “I have nice supporters,” R. says with a laugh. “I should have liked to see Hagen and Nietzsche going for a walk together!”