Tuesday, December 7:
We had a better night, and the light shines upon us. Our conversation leads us to life; I say that to me it seems to be just. R. says, “Certainly, and when we look at the difficulties in a life such as that of Cervantes, we can tell ourselves that the world’s will had quite other things in mind than just providing him with honors and riches.” I feel that if that had been what he wanted, he could also have achieved it, and I see a streak of nobility in his gaiety, his contempt for despair. One has what one wills, not what one desires.
He says that Will had required him to persevere, and that is why it had given him a good little wife and a king, recently he pointed out how unusual their relationship was, since the King demanded nothing at all from him. Around lunchtime R. comes up to my room and tells me with merry exasperation what happened to him when he wanted to go out: first of all, too warmly clothed, changed again, then fastened his cuff buttons in the wrong holes, at last the sun, which hid the very moment he went out. But in the afternoon we go out together, through the palace gardens with Stein to visit Joukowsky, deep in house-moving troubles. There R. is provoked by a luxury edition of Frederick the Great into venting his opinion of such “nonsense.” “One reads about barley and hops in magnificent lettering, while the most valuable things are cheaply printed.” Then he takes us to Angermann’s, and we return home by moonlight through the palace gardens.
In the evening R. again explains to us his thoughts on cosmogony, and then we go on to Die Meistersinger, the second act, the greater part of which he plays to us, sharing our incomparable delight in it. After our friends have departed, R. and I chat together, and we are joined by Boni, just returned from Munich. Various things worry us concerning the children, but my sense of being blessed does not waver. At lunch today R. made a significant remark, that a human being must never feel obliged, but always impelled.