Saturday, June 19:
R. had a good night’s rest and was out walking by half past six. At breakfast he says to me, “When I came home, I felt tired and depressed until I drank a sip of coffee and used the nasal spray, and then I thought to myself, ‘What a stupid substance it is, the brain, which can be so revived by external means, and the human being, everything in him constructed just to look outward and discover himself anew!’” When I tell R. that materialism seems to me to owe its origin to similar considerations, he says, “They leave out of account the Will inherent in every one, something which strives to avoid pain and to find well-being, until it perceives and becomes compassionate.” Thus approximately and according to the sense, for unfortunately the actual words at times elude me, because I am too fascinated by his meaning, and I myself am usually engaged in thinking and talking at the same time.
When I go to R. for dictation, he says, “It is after all a good thing that materialism has evolved from similar observations, for they show that feeling is everything.” His work has been giving him a lot of trouble, but “I know now how to do it, as Napoleon said to Venice.” He dictates to me the conclusion of his splendid introduction. Continuing his reflections on the world, he says to me, “How anyone can ever believe that during the short span of time through which one lives any radical changes can take place!”
We ride into town, R. and I, in the streetcar, “in which one feels as if one were hovering,” to Dreher’s. R. has a glass of beer and then, surrounded by carrozzelle, we seek and find the streetcar again, in which, undisturbed by other people, we talk about his introduction.
In the evening friend Rubinstein plays to us several things from Die Zauberflöte, and then at my request the A-flat Major Sonata; he is not entirely successful with it, and when we are alone, R. talks to me about the work and says he does not feel it to be a masterpiece, like Op. 111, for instance; he finds it abrupt, very personal; he considers it a weakness in Beethoven that in his final period he was so fond of writing fugues, for that was not his line. “Schools!” he exclaims. “How can one teach people to play such things? Though I think your father can.”