Wednesday, May 7:
R. had a good night, did not have to get up. In the past few days he has been greeting me with applause when I come up from my bath, but now he desists; he says he feels I do not like it, and I ask myself whether there is in fact anything coming from him which would not be welcome to me! He wants to finish his article today: “I wonder whether it will amuse you?”
After I have received from him the day’s blessings he says gaily, “You can always say to me, ‘If it were not for me, you would long ago have quit this earth’!” But spring has not come; a north wind is blowing, and it feels cold. He works without rushing himself, as he says, and enjoys his work. In cold wind and rain R. and I go to visit Frau v. Staff, the poor widow, and she thanks me and asks me to thank him for his divine kindness. R. then wanted to go to the palace gardens and to Angermann’s, but he soon returns, saying that Marke ran after him and forced him to return home. When I come down to supper, he says, “I have been pursuing philology.”
He has looked to see how the passage in which Luther translates the word “barbaros” as “undeutsch” appears in Greek, Latin, English, and French - French the least felicitous with the abstract word “barbare,” which is also so ambiguous, the English somewhat better; but Luther is splendid! R. cannot stress too strongly what this touch means to him; he returns to it once more late in the evening and says: “These young people! Do you remember how I once showed that passage to Rohde and Nietzsche, and they saw nothing in it? Such lack of understanding and imagination!”
R. and I spend the evening alone together, and R. first of all looks through the 2nd act of Parsifal in the arrangement by Seidl and Rub.; he finds this act “completely strange” to him. Then we read Carlyle - Midas, and also some passages at random, including a splendid digression on Cromwell. R. passes over only his writings in imitation of J[ean] Paul. Today was once again a “swan” day; this beautiful dress pleases R., and for me it brings back the fairest memories with its folds! R. makes fun of his absent-mindedness: inscribing the word “barbaros,” he wrote down the first beta quite correctly, but when he came to the second, he had to ask himself how to write it!