Friday, August 16:
R. did not have a good night; he got up and read the Ducs de Bourgogne — the usual result of having guests. We discuss whether he gave himself indigestion. “Oh, it is everything together,” he says, “the fact that one drinks more, above all the conversations with people who mean nothing to one.” He tells me about the sophisms which friend Feustel in his capacity of Reichstag deputy has now learned and got into the habit of using, for example, about the denunciations and how nothing can be done about them; how the world now consists of similar attitudes which are certainly sophisms.
I tell R. in reply that his violence of expression, for which he is so often admonished, is for me just a sign of his instinct for recognizing the world’s falsehoods, and that he often, unconsciously, does not listen to others because he does not wish the truth to be obscured, and it almost always is imperiled on such occasions. For as a rule nobody is more forbearing, more willing to listen to others, than he; indeed, when he trusts in another’s integrity, he has often enough taken hollow phrases to be genuine opinions and has defended them, even against the facts. His violence is his “Get thee behind me, Satan,” for even to listen would be to make a pact with falsehood and destroy his holy indignation.
R. eats nothing at lunch. Afterward, as we are conversing alone together, he points to a bleak sky and says, “I wouldn’t care about Kindschy, either, if only there were no other people on earth and we were always alone together like this.” But he also says to me, “I should like to hear Berlioz’s Les Troyens, that quiet ‘Italie, Italie’ chorus — do you know why I say this?” I: “I suppose you mean we should go to Italy?” Today we drew up a plan for Fidi’s future reading. Philosophy: Schopenhauer. Religion: Eckhart, Tauler. Art: R. Wagner. Natural history: Darwin. History: Greeks, Romans, English. Novels: W. Scott, Balzac. Frenchmen, Italians, Machiavelli. Otherwise all minds of the top grade, but only these: Goethe, Schiller, Dante, Calderon, Shakespeare, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles. No German historians, R. says, “I have read Ranke’s Reformation, and I felt as if I had a piece of blotting paper in front of me, on which one can see just a few individual letters; it is all so hazy.” Arrival of the B. Blätter with the splendid 3rd installment of “Public and Popularity.” Nice letter to me from Kl. with sad comments on the present Tannhäuser in Munich.
R. spends a very quiet day; I go for a walk in the garden when the sky clears, delighting in our pretty home; a rose, wonderfully graceful and fragrant, regards me with regal mildness, and the rosy clouds glowing above me seem like a reflection of its beauty. As the sun bids farewell in golden glory, indescribable emotions stir within me and come together in a humble prayer. Denial of life — if Christianity can be a religion on this account, not so the church, which, through the contradiction of being of the world and against the world, must needs become an organized hypocrisy. True, nondenominational Christianity calls to us from life itself, and all who suffer hear the call!
R. comes to join me, asks what the dogs will think, seeing me wandering all on my own: “They must have been quarreling.” But he soon leaves me, and in the evening has to eat very abstemiously. Boni reads to us a leaflet sent from Bern, also dealing, in remarkably cultured language, with present conditions, which it describes as “depraved.” Then a few pages of Opera and Drama. We feel peculiarly sad about the news brought us by the children that the graceful and daring young tightrope walker to whom R. recently spoke a few friendly words here fell from the rope in Regensburg and is now dead. R. thinks the authorities should forbid these performances. When R. complains of his upset stomach, I blame myself for having lost the moral courage I once possessed and not warning him off. “So,” says R., “I have destroyed you utterly, molded you entirely anew?” I: “I hope so.”