Tuesday, October 14:
R. had a good night. Recalling some childhood memories in the morning, he says he remembers how the Queen, angry with a baker’s wife (Frau Hammer) for having bought a shawl which was too expensive for her, imposed an “iron cow” on the house: “You can imagine how this ‘iron cow’ exercised my imagination! Later I learned it was a form of tax.”
Over coffee we discuss Twelfth Night, and R. remarks how right Carlyle was to observe that the English might lose their colonies, but they would still have their Shakespeare. R. regrets that Sh. did not devote more words at the end to the transference of the Duke’s love from Olivia to Viola; the comedy has a permanent flaw, he feels, and the happy ending seems somewhat contrived. R. read this last scene so beautifully, put so much secret feeling into the Duke’s words, and addressed Viola with such a meaningful look, that I could understand how, when he discovered that Viola was a woman, his whole soul overflowed with love for this being, and his feelings for the other were like a forgotten dream.
We then talk about the children’s education, and he observes that he himself was never really educated at all. How often did he lie to his mother, and he went around with the wildest and roughest of boys. While using the cup, he is also reminded of the yellow carriage which he saw driving across this square and which took him to Leipzig for three days. We speak of dreams, and he says Frau Wesendonck has recently been appearing frequently in his, but unfortunately always in an odd and unpleasant way; once with her mouth so lax that it opened only to utter malicious things, which caused him to say to himself, “Well, that’s the end of that.” What he had subsequently said and done had been for the sake of propriety. “It is a pity,” he concludes, “that memory takes such forms in one’s dreams, for one would like to remember only the pleasant things; they were the first people to reward me with a certain amount of comfort and to feel a desire to take care of me.” On the other hand, he dreams only good and touching things about Hans, whom we shall probably never see again.
Over supper he tells me I can have no idea how lazy he is; today, for example, he looked through and read the complete supplement to the Orbis Pictus; the nebulae and the [space left blank] in the sun had raised many thoughts in his mind about the universe. “The whole thing is a fireworks display,” he exclaims, “all so barbaric, so powerful, yet at the same time so undeniably subject to mathematical laws: and what is our earth by comparison? A mere speck.” We play whist, the winnings to go to the stone breaker to whom the physician for the poor said, “What am I supposed to do with your old bones?” and who is now seeking his revenge by claiming admission to the hospital!
R. read aloud the poem of “Alexander’s Feast,” since Herr Rub. needs Handel’s work for his essay on Brahms; afterward R. points out several ineffective and arbitrary harmonies in it and stresses how in Bach everything seems magnificent, necessary, and significant.