Monday, November 4:
A good night, but R. still feels tired. He tells me that he regards one of our guests, Councillor Kraussold, as a good omen; the councillor is over 70 and still very sturdy. It seems odd to me when R. says such things, for he gives the impression of having nothing to do with age! Very gloomy November day, plenty of rain. Over coffee we read some words in the Dresdner Nachrichten about the Trocadéro in Paris, ending with a comparison with our festival theater — short, but full of nice feeling.
R. is somewhat weary in the evening, but we chat away the time together in such a lively way that it makes us laugh. On this occasion we were exchanging impressions of German painting (Schnorr, Kalbeck, Cornelius), and remarking how soon these great impressions faded into nothing, though R. still likes some things by Cornelius — the picture of the downfall of Troy and the picture of the Nibelungs. “When I saw the first large painting,” R. says, “that was enough for me — its clumsiness reminded me of Pecht and Kietz, I felt as if I were standing between them.”
When I say that literature has not produced any similar illusions, R. says maybe not in us, but in others. We agree that, if there had been anything genuine in this artistic movement, of Schnorr’s in Dresden at that time, Tannhäuser, for example, ought to have been hailed by it as a fulfillment of all its desires! Our conversation then leads us to the King of Bavaria, his defection from our ideal — how sad, how terrible that was: “I had found my monarch, and this is what came of it! Now I have to ask the King of Prussia and the Crown Prince for what he failed to do for me.”
Penultimate conversation in the evening, at the second station, about perfumes. R. speaks of the melancholy in essence of roses, even if it does not reproduce the scent of roses; he is pleased that Plato places fragrance among the aesthetic pleasures which do not arise from necessity, but which come to us as a pure gift. Before we go to bed, R. describes to me the present situation in Europe and observes that war may now break out on account of the Bulgarians.