Friday, September 19:
R. had some difficulties during the night, but on the whole he did not sleep badly; however, his head feels confused, and the article he has just begun seems almost to irritate him — “abstract stuff,” and “how much scribbling have I already done!”
He also has to correct a passage, for he went too far in asserting that Mozart regarded the symphony with the eyes of a dramatist, and exaggerated the boldness of a certain passage. Over whist yesterday he suddenly exclaimed at the beauty of the first movement of Beethoven’s A Major, particularly from the second part on — everything hovers in it, “pure as the air.” On the other hand, Sgambati’s quintet, which he has been looking at more closely, no longer appeals to him; he finds in it the same exaggerations as everywhere else.
Herr Schon’s announcing his visit makes R. exclaim: “If they think I am going to set up a school — My school is performances — which others do when I am not looking,” he adds with a laugh.
In the past few days I have been occupying myself with last wishes, a very painful task for me, since my will and fortune consist in having no will of my own. But for the sake of the children let it be done, in R.’s name! My head feels exhausted, weary; old sufferings, old wounds keep breaking open again, and in one’s feelings of sorrow one sees the unreality of time; all that one gains from it is a stillness in the suffering, which, as if drugged, ceases to speak, no longer stirs — but it is still there in all its strength, seemingly immortal!
“Calm my thoughts, give light to my needy heart” — in the morning, with this prayer in my head, I stroll with the children to the woods via the Bruckmühle, great peace and pleasure in everything; a glance at the theater, silent greeting; forget-me-nots on the banks of the Main; a blue, unknown bird — “king’s fisher” in English, the “roi pecheur” — arouses wonderful thoughts. Driving home, I realize that death can be a release to us only when we pass into it as from slumber to sleep; when there is peace inside us, when we have achieved ecstasy in suffering, serenity in renunciation. Mere ending does not by itself bring us rest. Not just forgetting, either — a vain endeavor, anyway — but recalling in love what is destroying us.
Why do we find help above all in Nature, in which desire and the will to live are expressed so strongly — why does it bring us peace more readily than all the poets?
In the evening I read aloud to R. the introduction to Gfrorer’s Philo of Alexandria; in this excellent description R. discovers the starting point for his big work; if Protestantism had remained on a popular level, completely untheological, it would have been capable of survival; theology was its downfall.
In the evening much delight in the children’s wit, and R. tells me that Fidi’s gaze made a wonderful impression on him, there was something utterly familiar about it, an intensity of intellect, impossible to describe. “There am I,” he had thought. Blessings on you, my child, threefold blessings for the joy you have given him!