Friday, January 10:
R. had a nasty dream about me; when I complain about this, he says I ought to be pleased that nothing else works, and that if he has to be frightened into waking up, I am the only effective means of achieving it.
He works, then goes for a walk, is looking well when he returns to my side, and we have such a cheerful and friendly lunch in the children’s salon that, after he has left, I feel that in one’s youth love could never shine and bestow its blessings so purely. Devout people wish to be good in order to secure their place in Heaven, I wish to be worthy of my Heaven, and so I close my heart to all wicked impulses.
As R. sits down at the table beside me, he says: “Every day I become more and more conscious of the terrible facts of existence. Today, for instance, I thought of the earth’s vapors, which come from its inner fires and return to us as rain; this means that the human being is nothing but a form of combustion, self-consuming - dreadful!” I tell him that I am almost continually aware of life’s justice, punishment for bad deeds, reward for good ones. We quote several examples, small and great, and he cites Buddha and the stone thrown into the water which causes a widening circle of ripples.
R. goes for a walk in the afternoon, and in the evening I read the Memorabilia to him, a very great pleasure for us both. “When one compares the people of the i8th century to those people, with their lovely costumes, their sandaled feet, their way of looking for the beautiful in everything, courage, virtue, justice, all such things - how pitiful they look!” And: “We moderns are like the Greeks, who replaced Asiatic pomp with a natural civic sense, something we also aspire to nowadays. But how do modern people look - Machiavelli, for instance, who was closest to the Greeks in spirit - in comparison to them? What a background of corruption!”