Friday, November 14:
R. and I continue yesterday’s conversation, and he remarks how disillusioned we are with the German character, since we so clearly see through it! ...
At lunch a recollection of Aeschylus’s chorus (the female hare and the eagle) causes him to remark on the nobility of this outlook, and he feels it was things like this that might have led to accusations of blasphemy against Aeschylus; this connection between holiness and Nature was probably at the bottom of the Eleusinian mysteries. In our times, R. continues, religion should seek to influence ethics, and allow faith to be represented by art, which can transform illusion into truth.
During the evening he reflects on what might have been in history - if, for example, the Elector Friedrich had been king instead of Charles V, what would have become of Germany? How different from now!
[End of the thirteenth notebook of the Diaries.] Likewise, too, his own project, if the Crown Prince had taken an interest in it, which would have been possible. One always builds on such possibilities, he remarks.
In the evening friend Rubinstein plays to us the Idyll, his “picture” of Siegfried and the Rhinemaidens, and the American march, which enchants me anew with its expansive, vigorous picture of a bold, peaceful nation. Siegfried’s run-down appearance gives us cause for reflection regarding his present studies; a difficult problem here, too - and a worry! ...