Friday, July 9:
R. did not sleep very well; at 4 in the morning he is on the terrace, then back to bed, where he rests again. At breakfast we talk about the “Picture” of Tr. und I. which Herr Rub. played to us yesterday; R. finds little enjoyment in such extracts from his works.
After a silence he says to me, “Actually, one can only visualize the Will as negative, resisting things it does not desire. That is awful! And so it was a great stroke of genius on Goethe’s part to depict Mephisto just as the spirit of negation. And after all, the insights he gave us in the first part are not repeated in the end, when the poet takes over; he loses himself in fabrications, which make it impossible to appreciate the splendor of the conclusion.” He reverts to America: “So far it is the only country from which I have learned anything.”
Throughout the day discussions about our friend Stein’s departure; R. recommends looking on the bright side, saying that their friendship represents a gain: “You are young, I old, and yet we have come close to each other.” Over coffee he read to us what he has written in his article about Moltke.
Sea bath for R. and for me. Amusement over who is first in the water. In the evening R. reads to us the castle scene from Götz von Berlichingen; the toast to freedom and all the fine qualities of equanimity and justice which in the midst of Nature’s turmoil dominate Götz’s character remind me of R. and the German spirit, which to me seems to remain alive only in him. We drink to freedom with our friends!