Sunday, May 4:
R. had a good night. I do not know what association of ideas brings him to doctoral titles and similar honors, but he says, “With me it is not resentment, because such things never came my way - even as a conductor in Dresden I should have shied away from accepting one.”
R. works on his article slowly, because that is the beauty of it, he says: “Once one has expressed one’s thoughts, as I did in my first writings, then - if one has to speak again - the pleasure lies in how one says it.” R. goes out, talks to some cavalry officers in Angermann’s, and returns home in cheerful spirits. In the evening we read Carlyle’s Burns. We intended reading a pamphlet on socialism by Father Felix, the Jesuit, but the table of contents put R. off right at the start; he found it far less significant than he had expected, having felt that the Catholic party people would have had the sense to master the problems, whereas this appeared to be nothing but an expression of loathing.
After that, conversing by ourselves, looking back on our 15 years together! A great joy, the world virtually nonexistent: “We do not have a single bitter feeling,” says R. ...