Wednesday, July 14:
At breakfast R. talks about the C Minor Symphony, says he has been thinking a lot about it, and it seems to him as if Beethoven had suddenly felt the desire to set aside the musician in himself and appear in the guise of a popular speaker; here he spoke in broad outlines, painted al fresco as it were, left out all musical detail, which in the finale to the Eroica, for example, is present in such richness.
At lunch, after his work, R. is very cheerful; lavish praise for Heinrich von Stein. And again and again America. (Added later but referred back to this point: “This will fulfill my boyhood desires, for the constant thought in my mind was: What, die before I have seen this little earth for myself, and all there is in it? At least that, since one cannot get to know the stars! Till I came to realize that the spirit is everything.” He utters the last turn of phrase with such a comical emphasis and such a drolly significant look at me that we all burst out laughing.) Visions of us all arriving in California in a royal carriage! When friend Joukowsky says he wants to come, too, and to paint, R. says, “In earlier times, when business was bad in the small towns, theater managers used to attract audiences by announcing that a pig would be raffled after the performance; so I will get you to paint me, and that will be raffled.”
He tells us many things that he has read about the dispute between Russia and China and says, “We Western peoples, the conquerors and educators, could not do better than first of all to study the civilizations of the peoples we want to conquer, and then to reflect on them.” When our friend observes that the Russians would not wreak such terrible havoc as the English did with the aid of opium, R. says quickly: “Then with the aid of schnapps. Do not ever believe that from such methods, applied from outside, any good can emerge.” And when our friend observes that in San Francisco the Chinese fill the role of the Jews, sucking the land dry, R. says, “With the difference that they are industrious, and therefore entitled to gain these advantages.”
The second half of the day is, however, very dismal: R. does not feel well; he spits up some blood, and though the doctor seems unconcerned, I am inconsolable when I see him worried and depressed and full of complaints. How to prevent it, how to help him? This feeling of helplessness produces probably more pain than anything else, and whoever is burdened with such feelings will certainly realize what it was that made the saints, casting a glance at the nature of life without having experienced it, turn their backs on it. Now there is nothing to do but bear it. And I truly believe that no penance and no castigation demand more resolution than retaining one’s self-control under such circumstances. “Oh, that I can never feel free except in moments of ecstasy!” R. complains, “and that I always have to think of some enterprise, and always as if at the beginning of Creation!”
Moonlit night. Yesterday R. pointed with delight to the crescent above the mountain. When somebody remarks today that it is terrible to think that for the next 3 months the weather will remain constantly fine, R. says, “One must look on lovely Nature as a garment, something one must have, but not keep looking at; one must at the same time live one’s life and carry out one’s task.” He is pleased with the Swiss because of canton Basel’s decision to provide free education up to the university level. “The Swiss could have been a good example to us.”