Wednesday, August 20:
R. had a good night; today he finishes his letter to the King and tells me that in it he has also touched on the subject of vivisection. Coffee in the garden, a fine day; we walk through the meadows to the Riedelsberg, across the bridge R. had erected so as to give the children a direct route to us. Always creative in the small as well as the large things; and it is a constant source of amazement to me how, in the unsettled conditions of his life, he has always had this urge to found, to build, to achieve permanence!
There is a curious connection between the vitality of his inner contemplation and the acuteness of his vision, which allows nothing in the outward appearance to escape him, whereas he soon becomes blind to external circumstances in general.
Beer with the children at the Riedelsberg, after which R. and I drive home. Hail the theater! For other theaters in the world, marble and costly decorations; for thee, dedicated to higher things, just wood and brick, reminding me of the crib of our Saviour!
A lovely evening, both of us deeply involved in our conversation, still pursuing the subject of negation; in the world of morals, for example, it seems to me that it is enough to make no reply when one is offended, to keep silent when in the extremity of pain, in order to enable goodness to emerge from us; also never to tell a lie, so that we may live in truthfulness. We come to the subject of affirmation, Domenico in the Dante Symphony! At the end of it R. goes to the French window and calls me to come and look at the sky, which glitters down on us wonderfully. One star in particular shines powerfully down on us. I think it is Venus, R. thinks not; I am borne up by a wonderful feeling, as on waves of ecstasy, the world so far away! All is still, no suffering that does not melt into joy - is it the even greater solitariness which produced this effect?
At the beginning of the evening R. improvised for me “in the style of Chopin”; he did it as a joke, but it was lovely all the same.