Wednesday, March 5:
His foot caused him pain during the night; perhaps he walked too far? Yesterday his dear cherished face looked tired, and he complained of feeling languid - is his work proving a strain?
This morning we talked about the awfulness of a certain world in which women are not respected and the most horrible things are talked about. R. says, “Until I was quite old I used to feel like a callow boy, because I knew nothing of so many things I heard about from this person or that one.” I feel that the existence of such a world turns ideal art into something ghostly, and I tell him that a sense of an unknown yet suspected perversity has always filled me with melancholy, and if I had been obliged to take note of such perversities, I think I should have been driven to suicide.
Yesterday R. told Lulu very movingly about Hans's flight to him from St. Gallen when he was in Zurich. Over our after-lunch coffee R. recalled his previous life and said to me, “In Zurich that time I should have gone away with you, but we were just like Tristan and Isolde, we didn't understand each other - 'the dream of premonition.'”
I go for a long walk with the children, R. comes to meet me, then goes to Angermann's with Fidi, greatly pleased with the boy; returning home, he works something out and plays it to me in the evening.