Friday, December 26:
R. had a good night in spite of his little excesses; he makes use of the face spray and Frau v. Aufsess’s sulfur amulet. He thinks Rubinstein’s article not at all bad, and observes that he is a civilized man. On the lunch table I find the verse with the lovely fan! Eva eats with us, then goes back to bed.
Over coffee R. once again recalls the executioner and says, “He regarded himself as one of God’s chosen with his sword, but then he had to oil his machine a few times and use it for the first time on a deeply repentant man, and he was not one of those elegant people like the gentlemen in North Germany, who go to the coffeehouse with axes in their cases!” Of D. Q.: “That is the finest gift the Renaissance ever gave us, but it belongs entirely to the Middle Ages.” He quotes from Hamlet: “I see him still.” “We see him”: “Heavens alive, what great things they are, and how stiff Goethe must have been in his old age to cut the first scene, because it spoiled the significance of the reappearance! After that one has to recall Faust and the epigrams, and also the fact that one doesn’t know so much about Dante, for example.” I observe that D.’s lesser writings are more worthy of the Divina Commedia. “Yes, he always remained truer to himself.”