Monday, April 7:
When I was unable to sleep during the night and was thinking about what we had discussed, I told myself that Shakespeare was certainly the most powerful and most naturally creative of all dramatists, but the others, Schiller in particular, should not be dismissed; to whom does one more readily go for guidance and indeed consolation than to Schiller?
I tell R. this, also my impression of the book by Ch. K[alb]. While we are talking about Schiller, we recall my brother. R. talks about him and says, “He was too good to live - that is how I consoled Blandine at his death.”
In the afternoon I show the children and some acquaintances the pictures of the Sistine Chapel, with explanations; recently R. said to me, half in earnest and half in jest, that he could not bear all these people with their books: nothing but books - that had been the misfortune of the Reformation.
Unfortunately R. had more vexations today: Friedel came to complain of the improper behavior of the gardener, and R. got into an argument with the man, whose coarse and limited intelligence made me beg R. never again to waste his words in this way. R.’s magnificent sense of justice showed through even in this, and, in spite of his anger, his composure. However annoyed, he will accept an excuse when it appears to him justified and truthful.
In the evening the Jägers and the Wolzogens, and R. explains his plan for the concerts. Then some music, from Siegfried (“Forest Murmurs”) and from Götterdämmerung (“Departure”). “I like the Nibelungs,” says R. “They are so heathen; not a spark of Christianity anywhere.”
Unfortunately our little party does not prove very enlivening for R., and as always we find cause for regret in moving, even as an exception, beyond our most intimate circle.
I gave R. Renan’s inauguration address to read and, like me, he found it pitiful. He says: “I would never pay compliments to Frenchmen in front of other Frenchmen, and what he has to say about Germany he should have left to the English. I would never tell Germans anything but the truth.”
When we are already in bed, he says to me, “My fate is the same as Shakespeare’s: retirement to Stratford, and after my death I expect to be forgotten for a hundred years.”