Thursday, January 20:
R. slept well. He spoke softly as he was falling asleep, and I heard, among other things, the words “the best woman in the world.” When I tell him this, he says, “That is how it is, when one’s sleep is peaceful, one knows nothing about it.” But at lunch he does not feel well, agitated, and his digestion out of order.
We talk about Saint Augustine, whom friend Levi carries around with him, into whom I glanced and who does not please me on account of the God Creator he is always praising. R. criticizes the conductor’s gloominess and says: “I should think that being taken up in such a friendly way by people like us would be enough to make anyone cheerful; or are you superstitious, having trouble with your souls?” He then speaks of Rub., how he is always preoccupied with himself, and in spite of his good qualities can never throw this off. He compares him with Levi, who is much more fortunate, since he has his own field of activity. He advises “a carefree expansiveness.”
R. calls me Flower Mother, since at present I am frequently wearing asters, but he chides me for dressing à la vieille, is unwilling to admit that I am old! He goes for a walk with Jouk. and Levi, then he works, after complaining humorously that the story “Les Amants de Kandahar” keeps him so absorbed that he always comes to his score too late. Despite the corrupt state of the Orient as described in it, he says, Europe nevertheless seems to him a land of barbarians, with all its epaulets, etc.
France, where the new elections have turned out in Ferry’s favor, pleases him, as also Gladstone’s reply in connection with the Boers. He is still hoping that, with the collapse of external power, the right man will emerge in England’s interior.
In the evening we ask Rub. to play us the 1st movement of 106 again, and it gives us the same ravishing delight. Whether at a certain point it should be a sharp or a natural, R. says, he finds it impossible to decide, whereas with the famous passage in the Eroica he simply tells himself that to him it doesn’t sound right, and if anybody wished to do him a favor, he would play it differently.
Added in margin: “‘Marry my wife, then you’ll be cheerful,’ says R. to the gloomy-looking conductor.”
He talks of the new version he made of the ballade in Der fliegende Holländer, which he has unfortunately lost. The same thing happened with the “ich sank in süssen Schlaf” passage in Lohengrin, he says: he had it quite wonderfully but never found it again; as it now stands, it is an approximation.
When we are alone and I meet him again after our first parting, I find him much irritated by his two fingers (thumbs), which are painful and which he keeps stubbing. But I succeed in coaxing him out of these feelings of annoyance, and I have the joy of being able to tell him that, since for me he so completely is and represents the divine principle, I am constantly becoming more and more religious and able to follow the mystics with ever-increasing understanding, learning thereby to despise the world and accept the blessings of peace.
Perhaps this is why my greatest sacrifice is keeping in touch, for his sake, with a world in which there is no choice but to suffer. And, turning to his nature and the way in which it finds expression, I tell him that he is the only person I know whose speech and language are what color is to the leaf and scent to the flower, something involuntary, devoid of ulterior motive and in consequence very often made to look inconsiderate; when he then notices that he has offended someone with an involuntary remark, he tries with every means to put it right, even to the point of denying his own feelings.
Many people without understanding have taken him to be insincere because of this! Nothing any longer disturbs me, I see it all. I follow each and every utterance like a river whose pure source and outflow in the infinite deep are known to me.