Saturday, December 20:
R. did not have a bad night, and since the sun is shining, we wonder whether we might not go out; but it is too cold, exactly the winter one always wishes for and now cannot bear. R. would have liked to write his words for the New Year, but he is still feeling "stupid" and run down. He spends much time with Beethoven's sonatas; in the evening he plays the first movement of the A major Sonata, Op. 101, and says it is a consummate whole, a spring day, the model according to which he writes his idylls. Elsewhere he finds many empty bits - even, for example, in the F minor Sonata, things (runs) which one need not play, but merely indicate - yet the themes themselves are always lovely. This first movement of the A major Sonata, however, is quite incredible, he says, everything in it is gripping, every link in the chain; it is all melos.
Thought of [my sister] Blandine. R. says, "How much you have been through!" I observe that it is no credit to me that I survived it. R.: "Oh, you were one of the chosen."
For the benefit of the children he gives a dramatic imitation of his friend Flachs, and a merry game of whist ends a day which was particularly welcome to us since Eva had no temperature; in his joy R. gives her a thaler. A letter from a physiology student in Göttingen pleases R.; he answers it, drawing attention to his Open Letter.
In bed R. remarks with a sigh how little our civilization has to offer which is truly consummate; even with Shakespeare one is occasionally conscious of time, and as for music, one must remind oneself in whose service it was created - that of dissolute princes of the church - and this makes it all the more touching when an individual shows evidence of independence. With Aeschylus, on the other hand, one feels one is confronted with a forest of oaks, and anyone who did not share the general belief in it would simply have been thrown out! With this sigh he falls asleep.