Tuesday, June 22:
R. slept well and went for a walk in the morning with the children. At breakfast we talk about W. Meister, and R. says, “There is too much mawkish sentimentality in it.” He tells me of the letters between Goethe and Schiller about “Die Kraniche des Ibykus” and says jokingly, “Goethe didn’t want a rumpus, nothing excessive, and so he always wanted the cranes to be recognized more gradually.”
R. vexed by the formality of the post office, which is unwilling to hand over a money order; however, he gradually recovers his spirits, and we come to the subject of Don Giovanni, R. once again voicing his opinion of the looseness, lack of cohesion, and disturbing elements in this work which contains such splendid things and in which the exposition, for instance, is so masterly, but unfortunately all so lacking in integration. Of Fidelio he says it is a big lie to admire it unconditionally, just for the purpose of withholding recognition from something else; he recalls the nonsense E. Devrient talked about concerning the interesting character of Rocco. When the question is raised why Beethoven composed such a work, he says, “Rescue subjects were fashionable at that time, the central situation attracted him, and they were all like children, divine beings such as will never again be seen in our world.”
[Added in margin: “R. comes to D. Quixote, the scene with the old duenna: ‘The temptation which he will doubtless resist, but to which he is brought as close as possible.’ Comparison with W. Meister, a much greater poetic talent. In W. Meister mawkish sentimentality, which tells one nothing.”]
He also ridicules the false cult of Gluck and Handel and says, “What was extraordinary about these personalities is quite unknown to the gentlemen, who indiscriminately admire what was really only prolificness.” Of Mozart’s Requiem he says, “It is beautiful, written by a naive Catholic, a person of religious mind who enters a church and is moved by it; not at all churchly!”
In the afternoon we walk in the garden as far as the palm tree. [Added in margin: “In the afternoon, under the pepper tree in the front garden, looked at Maximilian’s Prayer Book, with great delight in its divine humor; the text, ‘Jesus fabricator mundi,’ amuses him; he says this was probably thought more refined, more elegant than ‘factor.’”] There is still a fresh breeze and no heat at all. Moonlit evening, bringing us great delight.