Wednesday, June 30:
R. had a good night after all, and as usual our breakfast time is indescribably amicable, sweet, and fair - "Day" has not yet come between us. He tells me about the girls, who went for a walk with him; I tell him about Fidi, whom I heard gardening with Antonio and Lorenzo, speaking Neapolitan and giggling.
We talk about art, and when I tell him that what I now find so interesting is the artist as seen in his works, leaving aside his circumstances and the subject of the work of art, a Mercury by Marcantonio [Raimondi], for instance, R. says, "Yes, but it is all just playing around, and it shows the techne, however great the artist may be." I then tell R. that I have taken Fra Bart[olommeo]'s Savonarola out of the folio for him, and I go on talking about him, whereupon R. says jokingly, "You have deprived me of the originality of my ideas - I wanted to bring up Savon[arola]." I: "Oh!" R.: "With my things you can always say, 'That is my brooch'" (anecdote about Frau Beer with Frau Schroder-Devrient).
Before that he sang to me a delightful theme which had just come into his mind - "unless it has only too obviously been stolen from something else," he says. Around lunchtime he calls out to me that he has completed his article, and I should send a telegram to Sorrento, saying we will be going there tomorrow. He is cheerful and good-humored at lunch, and at coffee even exuberant, as we talk about Heaven and Hell; in connection with my weeping eyes, for which God would reproach me, I speak of Dante and say that he saw God through the eyes of Beatrice: "What, he used her as a pair of binoculars?" he asks.
At lunch he recalled a line in Der Freischutz, "Wie, was, Entsetzen!" ["How, what, oh, horror!"], and he thinks the change of rhythm in the words when Annchen joins in particularly good. I show him Fra Bartolommeo's picture of Savonarola, and he talks at length about this face and the significance of this man. He says it cannot be imagined otherwise than that people were carried away by some tremendous emotional energy, a certain lucidity which has nothing to do with intelligence. "But I shan't mention him - that would lead me too far astray." Of Christ he says one cannot imagine otherwise than that he was a person of great and gentle beauty.
He places the cigarette box in the center of the floor as a sacrificial altar, does a dance, and tells Joukowsky that he will also have to perform this dance if he wants a cigarette. Recalling the painters who burned their pictures for Sav., he says to me, "I wouldn't have burned you," and creeps out on all fours. (This morning he again spoke of his desire to make a fortune in America.) R. goes into town to buy himself a hat, returns home somewhat tired, and is rather worn out all evening, which we spend in chat.