Thursday, February 10:
R. reflects on the German language, and how everything is to be found in it, for example, the word Recht [right], from which has been derived so abstract an idea as die Rechte - putting a thing “to rights.”
Toward lunchtime he calls me and reads to me his new article, “Know Thyself.” Whether the Jews can ever be redeemed is the question which, in connection with it, occupies our thoughts; their nature condemns them to the world’s reality. They demand of our art, which can only be a refuge from prevailing conditions, world conquest as well.
A letter from Lusch is very characteristic and original. R. feels that Hans’s temperament shows a strong influence, but, helped by a better education, she would surely never be tempted into such injudicious statements as “a Christian converted to Judaism,” etc. R. also says that he has the feeling that seeing Lulu again would be bound to have a very beneficial effect on Hans. Today, in spite of the weather, R. goes for a walk with Jouk., as far as Senfft’s, while I drive out to the mental institution with our neighbor’s poor wife.
In the evening we read in Deutsche Reform an article which all but implies the complete dependence of the anti-Semites on the Conservatives. Then the second installment of W[olzogen]’s article “The Wagnerite as Writer,” which so touches us that R. sends for him and drinks a toast to this Wagnerite in particular. Much about the Jewish problem: R. keeps coming back to the question, Who are we? Of a photograph of Carlyle he says, “We should look like this, righteous and sad.” He maintains that I do not like his article, which sounds very funny. At supper we turn to the subject of Frederick the Great, and R. says, “One forgives him everything, one accepts him as he is, just because one sees before one’s eyes a true character.”