Tuesday, January 4:
A good night for R. and for me, lovely weather. R. reads Gobineau’s stories and finds them interesting. We go for a walk in the palace gardens around 1 o’clock.
Added in margin: “When I asked him at 1 o’clock what he had been doing, he said, ‘Putting on a shirt,’ and he complains about all the difficulties it caused him. Recently he said, ‘My hands are more absent-minded than my head.’”
A sketch of Kundry, brought along by Jouk., pleases us a lot. “Actually,” says R., “she ought to be lying there naked, like a Titian Venus.” Now this has to be replaced by finery.
A nice letter from Standhartner pleases him and starts him reminiscing about Vienna; St. is proof, he says, that one can get through to the Viennese with music, how much had he done for him when he settled in Vienna! He describes the bone structure of Standhartner’s skull as frighteningly Slavonic, yet at the same time pleasing.
In the afternoon we go for a walk in the palace gardens, delight in the fine winter weather; the sun gladdened us in the salon, “and it is always the setting sun,” says R., “which gives us this light, like the smile of a god”; the transfigured picture of Beeth. delights him. The ice, the evening glow, the crescent moon appearing; now and again poor women, to whom he gives something and who bless him. We also stroll in the garden, and there it is begging children who besiege us, and the evening star which delights us.
When I tell R. that, bad as my sight is, at table I clearly see his countenance as something impregnable, reserved, as it were, protecting and shutting off his inner being from outside attack, and his gaze as that which gives, bestows, reveals his inner thoughts, he tells me, “It is your will which allows you to see all that.”
And in deep, harmonious peace we part; the glow of the setting sun, the moon’s chaste gold, the gleaming purity of the evening star have left their blessings deep in my heart. All, all that is, speaks of the land of nowhere, the never-never land for which one’s heart is always yearning!
In the evening we intend to finish Cervantes’s story, but we find it quite impossible. Instead R. reads us “Councilor Tusmann” from Die Serapionsbrüder; we enjoy it, and R. says, “He is an original talent. I am glad we Germans have someone like that to show, and everything by Hoffmann always contains an idea.”