Saturday, December 7:
R.’s night was not a good one... He slept well and gently at first, but then he woke up, got out of bed, read something, lay down again, fell asleep but had spasms in his arms and legs; I took his hand in both of mine and with my pressure fought against his cramp! And truly it subsided, and I had the joy of watching over his sleep, for a few hours at least. What thoughts flooded into my mind as I did so! I sought to settle the children’s entire future.
Beforehand, a dream had comforted me: a star fell, I uttered the wish that is the only one I now have, the stars fell from the sky, and soon the whole square and the street (somewhat similar to Lindau) were full of stars; rain falling like a blessing. No wonder I was amazed when R. told me at lunchtime today he had had a dream: I came to him full of joy, telling him I had got a letter from Hans, and everything was arranged with regard to the children, and so once again he dreamed what was in my thoughts!
R. agrees with me that such a night seems like something from the distant past. But he feels rather better. He asks for tea, calls tea Catholicism, coffee Protestantism, tea is more elegant. The violin for dancing amuses him: “That’s what is meant by improvisation, when there is no melody in it.” But then during one exercise he thinks he can discern the theme of the big Leonore Overture. I do not remember what makes me think of the words “Yes, who in his heart’s sure keeping counts but one true soul his own” and to say, “Beethoven never possessed one!” “Few ever do. Goethe did not, either; he stopped searching because he did not think it possible, instead he turned to research and the pleasures of his intellect.”
When he embraces me before we part for our daily duties, he says, “There is only one soul on this earth, and I possess it.” He does not work but reads a little, and he looks better when he comes up to my room for lunch. Fidi also had a bad night, which casts a slight shadow over our mood, but, since there is no danger, our spirits gradually become as lively as ever.
Of politicians, referring to Bismarck, R. says, “Basically they all harbor a cynical pessimism which is made to look to others like optimism. Since he (B.) has the entire strength of Germany at his disposal, he really might have looked a little deeper” (yesterday he said, “Rome once had people like B. in masses”); “he is not an ideologist.” “Nap. III cherished an idea, the unification of the Latin races under one scepter, but there was no strength left in the Latin races.”
With regard to this letter he says, “It does squeeze everything together so.” I say I should like to read the American one. “Yes,” he says, “that is something for which the strength of this nation was preserved, as it were.”
I then tell him about K. Ritter’s König Koderich, signs of talent, but mixed with a corrupt, and apparently deliberate, negligence in language. R. then speaks about Ritter as an individual, his great gifts, his facility for music, and that is not a good thing: one should have to exert oneself with music, there are not many Mozarts about.
Then about his collected writings, how few people are buying them: “I must be completely despised in those bourgeois circles which buy expensive books, completely despised. But what a remarkable time that was, when Cotta knew he could do good business with Goethe’s writings! The press spoils everything nowadays.” He comes to Balzac, his grandiose pessimism, in Pierrette, for instance, in which even posterity is unjust. He laughs: “If we had a necromancer, there are all sorts of people we could conjure up.” Then he adds: “Though really we should have nothing to say to each other. I should have had nothing to say to Schopenhauer.”
When I tell him I believe B[alzac] would have understood him, in spite of being a Frenchman, R. doubts it and says again, “We should have nothing to say to each other.” He is pleased with Virgin Soil and says it could have been written by Balzac. I observe laughingly that it is now always he who reads the French books, and I the German. He goes for a walk; the air has become keener, and I hope it will do him good. In the evening he drinks his glass of grog upstairs with me in the gray room; I have arranged it so that it will please him a bit and raise his spirits; he talks of his rose hill (the meadow), which still gives him pleasure. Then I read Busch to him, little enjoyment!