Wednesday, November 13:
He dreamed about lakes; I am reminded of scenes that took place at lakesides! In spite of his cold he is well and cheerful. A letter yesterday from Herr Lip. provokes him to say he is willing to be taken anywhere as long as it is not where he might “meet the Dauphin” (Lipiner).
Returning to our reading from yesterday he says: “That is the curse of Christianity, all this clinging to the Old Testament, such a name: Ephraim! It shows how predominant the Old Testament was, in the beginning presumably in order to impart more authority to the new religion. But it can’t all be explained by that: there are such things as simple universal pests. I suppose we must accept that another 1,000 years will be needed to cleanse the Revelation of the Old Testament.”
A little later he says: “The transformation scene, painted by that tippler Doll — what do you think of that? And Jank, who looks like a valet mixing a drop of poison for his master.” Friend Wolzogen’s birthday, Fidi proposes the toast.
R. goes for a walk, says on his return that he feels unwell but observes, when I express concern, that it doesn’t need to be shouted at once from the rooftops.
We meet in the dining room, he comes in singing “The mighty Fritz was very small” and says: “What can a Jew make of something like that, which is a sort of folk song for us, and of the way the people saw their great man for themselves in a foreign civilization? Who is better entitled to tell that to the Jews than the Prussians? And so I should like to declare to the Reichstag.” He works in the evening as well.
After supper he again talks about Bach, saying, “In him you find all the seeds which later flourished in so fertile a soil as Beethoven’s imagination; much of what Bach wrote down was done unconsciously, as if in a dream; my ‘unending melody’ is predestined in it.” He wishes he could play the piano well enough to perform Bach for himself.
Then he goes through the introduction to the first movement of Beethoven’s A Major Symphony and exclaims, “Oh, to have such an inspiration, such an inspiration!” [Added in margin: “R. would like to have an orchestra.”]
We continue with Lessing (Anti-Goeze).