Monday, June 24:
Today is Midsummer Day! R. up once in the night, but on the whole slept well. Solemn exhortation to Fidi from me, no punishment, I try to awaken his sense of pride; R. fears he is too soft. Fidi good; also a good letter from Lulu in England. An Israelite in Cologne, Herr Seligmann, is providing the necessary funds for the production of the King there. R. continues after all to read the Bhagavad-Gita and discovers some more good things, the bad only intermittent. He took great delight in the portrait of the actor Eckhoff in the I.Z.: “It’s good to see Germans with such faces.” When we part after lunch, R. to take a rest, he says to me in tender jest, “So we can agree about one or two things at least!” I: “If you will permit me to be one with you.” He: “Oh!... And she is surprised that I look so well, and doesn’t know where it comes from!” After this embrace I ask myself whether life smiles on such moments of happiness between us. Black birds calling and answering lull my heart to peace again, and daily work resumes its course. R. reads some of Nietzsche’s latest book and is astonished by its pretentious ordinariness. “I can understand why Rée’s company is more congenial to him than mine.” And when I remark that by this book N.’s earlier ones were just reflections of something else, they did not come from within, he says, “And now they are Rée-flections!”