Thursday, June 10:
R. is very put out that there is no level walk here, and so we work out a plan for him to take the streetcar to the Villa Nazionale and have his walk there, riding up from the gates on a donkey. He works and tells me that he has been writing about Michelangelo and Raphael. When I jokingly ask, “Is that perhaps due to my influence?,” he replies, “No, I have taken care not to go into detail, and have come to the conclusion that a picture such as The Last Judgment is really an absurdity, something that cannot be painted.”
Malwida mentions the botanical gardens to us, and we decide to go there. At 5 o’clock all 9 of us take the streetcar, to R.’s great joy. He says one feels like part of some great element, and indeed one does have the pleasant sense that reputation, power, position mean nothing here; one is “a man among the rest.” A most delightful journey through lively working-class districts; R. jokes, “Just as in London, everything here takes place in the streets.” All of it picturesque, and the botanical gardens truly enchanting.
The streets become more and more lively, and, to crown it all, the gracious Queen of Italy drives past our streetcar. On R., who salutes her, she makes a very charming impression, and this gives our expedition its first happy conclusion, which is soon followed by another. R. presses my hand, cries, “See you again at the Torretta,” and swiftly leaves the streetcar. He literally runs to Dreher’s! We ride on, and at the Torretta there he is again. I send the children ahead and walk slowly after them with Malwida in almost total darkness, wave to a carrozzella which I first took to be empty, though in the very same moment I cry, “R. is in it!,” and, quite true, he is in it, and amid much merriment all three of us squeeze ourselves into the little carriage!
Quite an incomparable journey, from beginning to end a vista of palm trees against the evening sky, the Chiaia softly illuminated; after the previous teeming throngs, to which the gracious female figure gave an air of ideality, the meeting with R., and the final entrance into the silent, noble Villa d’Angri! R. thought with pleasure of the Queen and said, “What a moving impression people in this position can make, even when they are not conscious of the extent to which they are the symbols of human suffering and life!” We talk with friend Joukowsky about painting, and R. observes how much talent is used, more or less unrecognized, in newspaper illustrations. He concludes the evening with a vehement apostrophe to Malwida, reproaching her for her pseudo-relationships and saying that she should come to us and let the others come to her, not she to them. He mentions my father with “his 3 flagpoles,” Pest, Rome, Weimar, and all the important faces, and he says it is quite worthless and betrays an emptiness which has to be filled out with pseudo-obligations of this kind. “Cosima did it differently, you marry Liszt!” With this joking remark he concludes his very earnest and vehement address, in which the extent of his passionate truthfulness once again enchants and moves me.