Wednesday, September 8:
R. had a good night and is not dissatisfied with his condition, declares that a beneficial crisis has taken place. At breakfast he comes back to Werther, says: “It is Goethe’s work par excellence, all the rest is a sort of covering up of the main point. This is how a poet must present himself to the world, and really he should never have written anything else, for even Götz is a kind of diversion. Shakespeare and I, we could do many things, for we always held to the main point. And his” (Werther’s) “feelings are entirely without bitterness, for instance, his objection to bad moods, whereupon Lotte complains that he always takes everything so much to heart; with such a character Werther was bound to come to grief.”
R. rules lines in his score during the morning. At lunch, when we are talking about Fidi’s and Jouk.’s journey to Perugia, we come to the subject of N. Helbig: “Such people lack concentration,” R. says, “they know too many things.” I showed him the ideas about Christ and the saints which I had written down; he says: “I understand you all right, but the others won’t. For one can only visualize redemption as a negation.”
After lunch he continues ruling lines, then we go for a walk together through the vineyards, taking great delight in our splendid surroundings.
In the evening we continue reading Werther, still moved by the beauty of the book. But R. is annoyed by Lotte: “I suppose she has to be like that, but it is incredible; she would have been quite content to see Werther pining away for fifty years, would have become a mother every year and enjoyed having him at her side as a sort of lovesick swain!” In the evening he grumbles a little about his condition, saying the crisis is wearing him out.