Monday, September 30:
R. again did not have a good night; he had taken medicine. He shows me a piece of paper on which he wrote down his work for today. Animated by my having my breakfast beside him in bed, he tells me about Lord Chatham, chained to his bed in a cold room by gout, being visited by another lord who, unable to stand the cold, lay down on the neighboring bed; they began to argue and were discovered lying side by side, quarreling violently.
Today I have a sorrow to contend with: “As long as all is well between us,” R. said yesterday forebodingly, and I was unthinking enough not to understand him fully; today I learn that R. does not quite believe that I begrudge him nothing, nothing at all. However, even the tears this causes me are selfish; in the same way that from the depths of my soul I begrudge him nothing, would gladly for his sake live in penury, so, too, I do not begrudge myself my pain; after lunch I wander far through the meadows beneath the Birken and regain my spirits, even to the extent of blessing my pain, the most hurtful of all, for I know that there is not a single one among his wishes and inclinations which draw from me even an expression of surprise may he be blessed in all he does, by everyone and everything, even my pain! I beg him to forgive my tears, he does not want to hear of it, but his tender embrace and his smiling gaze allow me to forgive them myself.
Then R. works, and at supper tells me he had been looking for the Erlösung biete ich auch dir passage but had then closed the piano, telling himself he must wait for inspiration, “for this fellow mustn’t speak like a preacher, it must all arise out of his emotions.” At supper Herr Kellermann tells us something about conditions in Berlin, the senseless construction projects there, a railway through the whole city, for instance, a ramified system going uphill, the poor craftsmen whose tools are pawned, a picture filled with horror and misery. Afterward Herr Kellermann plays us a Beethoven sonata, the Pastoral Symphony, and we are astonished at his incorrectness; R. then shortly explains to him the style of this work, “a forerunner of the Pastoral Symphony,” and how simply it should be played, with as few accents as possible and no fixed tempo. He fears that the new school is bringing excess even to things like this, which will be ruined in consequence.
In the evening R. tells me how beautiful I looked as I turned the pages, and how he enjoyed watching me ah, if only I had all the beauty in the world to lay at his feet!