Saturday, November 29:
When I tell R. that I have been playing Mozart's Fantasy in C Minor to Boni and what a beautiful impression it has once more made on me, he says, 'Yes, I discovered it in Uncle Adolph's house, and it dominated my dreams for a long time.'
Disturbing rumors regarding the health of the Bayreuth factotum make R. observe how sad it is that for a few marks this man has to cover long distances on foot in order to carry out his exhausting work, looking after the sick and also, indeed, the insane. What would appear splendidly uplifting if it were performed through love, in the service of a religious order, seems humiliating and wretched when done simply to earn a living.
Coming to fetch me for lunch, R. talks about Karl Ritter's book, which on the one hand is written with much understanding and in a good style, but on the other reveals so much absurd perversity - as, for instance, when he calls Nietzsche's theory of tragedy a joke - that one feels it would be better to stop reading it. 'Just because they are unwilling to admit something, they become stupid!' he exclaims.
At lunch he talks about Roman law, which may very well have been the proper thing for establishing a clear rule over subjugated peoples but is not suitable for us Germans. He adds, 'That will all be terribly simple once the great revolution takes place.' After lunch he asks what word the Romans had for the Greek conception of 'beauty,' and he cannot get over the fact that all they seem to have had was the ugly word 'pulchrum'; he then, by himself, comes upon 'formosa,' a word the Spaniards also have ('hermosa'). At lunch he speaks in praise of Lecky's book. He goes for a walk today, meets the children on the ice.
In the evening we play cards, and when we think of what Schopenhauer thought about that, R. says, 'There is a difference between resorting to cards out of inner emptiness and boredom, which Sch. was referring to, and playing in order to distract oneself from too much mental activity.' [Added later: 'He follows the whist with a game of lansquenet, then recalls how passionately he used to play cards in his youth.'] He jokes a lot with Lusch about his death, and yesterday, when it was mentioned that Tasso's corpse was borne all through Rome, he said he would forbid any such thing, he had no wish to be carried up to the Bürgerreuth.
Many memories of our difficulties with some painters and costume designers - and always incredible that the theater is standing there: 'If I were told it was just a phantom, I should believe it!'