Tuesday, August 19:
R.'s night was not entirely good, though not bad; our breakfast conversation is again about Socrates's defense: “That is the height of art,” says R., “but that came naturally to the Greeks.” I continue to reflect inwardly on negation, and, though I find it hard to put into words - perhaps because I have not yet thought it out clearly - it seems to me that art should not concentrate entirely on positive aspects either; abstract beauty produces the Byzantine Christ, and representations of heavenly bliss produce unfortunate pictures and not very good music. By comparison, the transmutation of Isolde, based on extinction, Brünhilde's blissful happiness, based on downfall, are beautiful, as too is the Christ of the tribute money, with his bitter, individual mildness; and it is not the Madonna Gloriosa who speaks to us in Goethe, but Gretchen!
R. starts his birthday letter to the King. Merry lunch with the children, then at about seven o'clock we drive out to them in the rain. R. is delighted with their very diverse personalities, and when we arrive home repeats, “They are all we have, and it is always interesting to watch their development.”
In the evening, when we are alone in the salon, we talk about the King, though first about Marie Hohenlohe, whose “wickedness” he can explain; but of the King he says that this one year, which turned him away from utter devotion into vagaries of taste and a complete denial of our cause, is incomprehensible. I try to explain it by saying that the King is no normal being: “The Will wished to help you, and knew no other way of doing it in the present circumstances; an anomaly, such as you are, can be helped only by another anomaly, an additional cause of suffering for you.”
Regarding Semper's funeral, R. tells me that the Protestant parson in Rome and Prof. Moleschott quarreled about who should deliver the address at the graveside; in the end they both spoke - a nondenominational burial! Twenty-two years ago, my wedding day, journey to Zurich, saw R. there!