Monday, January 17:
Letter from my mother, good and friendly; worked with the children while R. was revising his "Norns' Song" for the second sketch. Wrote to Prof. Nietzsche. He has sent me Gervinus on Handel; when in this connection I tell R. that Gervinus's book on Shakespeare is still selling well after thirty years, R. says, "That's because of the subject. If Shakespeare were to write a book about Gervinus, it would probably not sell at all."
"Arithmetic is to music what words are to an idea." "The musician who does nothing but write music from morning till night, entirely ignoring the world of ideas, must be an ox; he is missing far more than those who, knowing nothing of music, observe the rest of the world."
"Everything in Goethe and Schiller tends toward music. What alienates us here and there in Calderon is the Italian element, which brought forth opera; in our poets we sense the basic element of music drama."
R. goes for a walk, then writes to Baron Werthern, asking him to send him the Berlin diploma. I with the children, Grimm's fairy tales. In the evening finished King Lear.