Tuesday, July 27:
[Added in margin: “He spoke during these days about the legend of Heracles, said it left him totally indifferent, meant nothing to him.”]
R. had a good night, but he is still much tormented by his heat rash. At breakfast he is pleased by a letter from Berlin: a Herr Oelten offers a large plot of ground in Berlin for the erection of a Wagner theater. In view of the attitude of the Court theater, this would be quite acceptable to R., and he instructs me to ask friend Feustel to look into both the offer and the man. He laughs and says, “The Emperor will surely come when I stage my Ring there; he will not consider it beneath his dignity.”
He also talks of the curious character of the Jews, in connection with some anecdotes about Prof. Bernays: “A strikingly alien element has come among us.”
He is still run down, but the doctor treats the matter lightly. R. goes into town to have a glass of beer at Dreher’s, but he does not enjoy it; however, we have a nice merry moment when he drives up in the carrozzella, I go to meet him in a pink bathrobe and he gives me a lift.
The thing that struck his notice in town today was a very charming and elegant lady reclining in her carriage, languidly talking to her companion, while behind them a boy clung awkwardly to the carriage. R. observes that this is typical of the elegant world, not to know what is going on around and beneath one. “And yet for this elegance to be maintained, one has to imagine a husband making financial transactions, getting mixed up with unsavory people. And then the stupid look one would get from a woman like that if one were to try to interest her in anything at all.”
Goethe’s reflections on the Jesuits (at the start of his Italian Journey) produce from R. the remark, “He just happened to discover that, after all the other orders had disappeared, this one had managed to create some sort of life for itself, and that interested him.” When I tell R. of the Franciscans’ struggles with Pope John XXII, he says, “Yet the horrible thing about all these saints is their recognition of the Pope as Christ’s representative.”
Evening on the terrace: he yearns for the Villa Angermann and a glass of good Rhine wine; but when I suggest that we return home, he will not hear of it. His rash seems to be disappearing somewhat; recently he said, “The dear Lord must think that I have no nerves and no feelings and be asking Himself: What can I do to pinch and torment him?”
Our standing joke is now Palumbello, the dog, whose name has become an epithet, used for everything to which one is unable to give a name. Yesterday it was even “The relationship of Saint Catherine of Siena to Palumbello!” Over coffee talked of clothes, how unnatural and unbecoming; R. would like to wear a shirtlike robe, and he speaks of the curvy lines of the female body, which are spoiled by the present fashions. We wonder how in such unnatural circumstances proper humans can be born! He says the Empire costumes were much better. He quotes Feuerbach’s words concerning the abdomen: “In men a restaurant, in women a temple of love.”
[Added in surrounding margins: “Next summer he wants to go to Gräfenberg, and then to America, perhaps to stay there, if only to put Fidi out of reach of the ‘horrible soldier business.’ In connection with our discussions of astronomical calculations, he says that previously their purpose was just to enable wars to be fought more safely; now, when the main thing is already known, it would at best be an idle pastime to occupy oneself with it.”]