Monday, February 23:
R. slept somewhat better, though not entirely well. He occupies himself with his biography and is amazed how much there is to note in each period; he has the feeling that it all happened yesterday, and it all repeats itself, except for one thing. I tell him that in contrast my previous life slumbers in deep caverns, and I am aware of it only from the time when he became my guide.
At the breakfast table Herr J. tells us something nice about the Emperor of Russia, which adds to R.’s feeling that the Emperor is a very good man who has been turned quite rotten by the unaccountable attacks on him. Regarding the attempts on the German Emperor’s life (“These attempts were bestial acts”), R. thinks the perpetrators should be locked up in lunatic asylums in the English way. But the nihilists are people of a different kind, he says. When Herr J. remarks that it is deeply moving to find so creative a person building solely on destruction, he says he would be glad if everything in Russia were blown to pieces, and out of personal gratitude he would allow himself to be blown to pieces as well. R. laughs at the way everybody thinks of his own personal attitude toward things and is incapable of recognizing or judging anything without asking himself what his attitude toward it is.
R. rides into town, makes some purchases, and returns in the carriage. He feels that my portrait is not uninteresting, he says it contains an idea.
In the evening Herr v. St. reads to us his translations of several poems by G. Bruno, and R. recalls that his uncle spoke to him as a child about the philosophers.