Monday, December 8:
In consequence of a slight error in diet R. had a very bad night and woke up in great agitation, feeling very unwell. I experience the happiness of seeing that, by applying compresses, I soothe him to such an extent that we attain a mood of great cheerfulness! As I hum, “’Tis there, ’tis there,” he says, “An Italian cannot understand that at all, and I could imagine that a Laplander, if he were to see all our trees in bloom, might sing, ‘Know’st thou the land where the pear tree blooms?’” “I am both Nero and Naso,” he says when he discovers a smudge on his nose. Yesterday he told me that he had been thinking of the stretta in the second act of Don Giovanni, and was astonished by all this clashing of sound without any sign of a musical motive, nothing but codas such as he might have intended for his overture. He says that Rossini was the first to try building a stretta like this on a melody. We begin a conversation yesterday, are interrupted, and after a long while I continue with it, and R. says in English, “Have you seen Bosco?” This refers to one of his stories, about two Englishmen who walked twice around the city of Leipzig; on the first tour: “Have you seen Bosco?”; on the second: “You must see Bosco” - nothing else! When I go up to him after lunch, he makes a joke about his funeral, how I must clothe him and accompany him with military salvos, etc. I reply in accordance with my way of thinking, and he says, “If you die first, then I shall start looking around me like Andolosia after losing his moneybag, and shall go on searching until I die.” He is thinking a lot about his projected articles.