Tuesday, January 20:
Very cold, Vesuvius covered in snow, R. run down, and on top of that unpleasantly affected by a letter from the poor singer Jäger. He writes at once to Richter.
A walk into town, R. visits a barber and returns very worn out; to distract him, I talk of various things I read in Pungolo, including news of unrest in Hungary. R. remarks that one should not imagine that the days of the Junkers are past; they are still powerful and very sure of themselves.
In the evening I ask him to read to us the “Cl. Walpurgis Night,” which he does. When we are discussing it the following day, he mentions the cranes and the dead heron, and how the plutonic emergence of such a mountain means the beginning of covetousness and tearing to pieces, whereas in the action of water Goethe saw the elements of gentleness and beauty.
Today he said that one is not bound to assume that mankind was born evil; it became that only with the beginning of history, the killing of the first animal.