Sunday, October 26:
R. had a fairly good night but feels heavy and run down, and, quite contrary to his usual practice, he takes a walk in the morning, telling us at lunch that he saw the exact place on which his statue would be erected - in the middle of the round border on Cottenbacher Strasse - but he does not know how they will place him, facing the theater or the school; this calls forth many jokes.
In the morning he told me that Siegfried had dreamed he was dead. Why can I not bear any mention of old age or anything else to do with the laws of Nature in connection with him?
We talk about Don Quixote, and R. says, “What makes these few works eternal is simply that they are always new to us.”
We take another walk like yesterday’s. R. comes to meet us and, turning in the palace gardens in the direction of the Birk, shows us the architectural effect which pleases him so - when one enters from the nursery gardens and sees the gate, the single statue, the vase, and the trees grouped here in a grove.
Added later: “I have sent for patterns of furnishing materials. Pompadour style, to please R.; he finds all the modern things so stiff, so unpoetical. Twelve years ago he found in Paris some flower patterns of the kind he loves. During the walk in the palace gardens R. talked about Swiss battles, which he calls the most heroic in modern history; he tells us about the Battle of Näfels.”
Letter from Prof. Overbeck about the wretched state of our poor friend Nietzsche’s health, and not to be permitted to do anything, let alone to be able to!
In the evening much talk about Schiller, arising from Tischbein’s portrait; R. deplores Goethe’s influence over him, which was responsible for the present form of Wallenstein; he talks about the excellent idea of wanting to present a picture of the 30 Years’ War, and says that both Goethe and Schiller thought of Bernhard von Weimar as a subject, but then the first question had always been how, and in what meter - iambics or what? “Goethe at that time was a complete ass,” he says in his characteristic way, adding that, if he had not finished Faust and written Elective Affinities, one would not know what to make of him. Of Schiller’s essay on the naive and the sentimental, he says the beginning is splendid, but then it peters out.
More Don Quixote, up to the gallant Basque - we skip the list of books.