Tuesday, April 12:
R. tells me in the morning that he dreamed of his “old sweethearts” - all mixed up into a single person - who pressed around him, urging him to go to the theater, so that he would have been glad if a policeman had misunderstood and arrested him. He works, and is pleased with the effect the chorus will have in the first act.
We go for a walk, first for a short while in the garden, then in the palace gardens. In the evening our friend Levi is here - it all goes quite well, but when the circle assembles, there is much suffering for R., on account of the great dullness of our good friends. He reads some scenes from Hamlet (beginning of the second act), and Levi quotes to us from Cymbeline a passage which could serve as a motto against vivisection. “Shakespeare has everything,” R. exclaims in delight.
After the company has departed, R. and I stay up, R. at first commenting gaily on the absurdity of such reunions, while I have the curious experience of not feeling at all bored - immersed in my own thoughts, overwhelmed by the scenes from Macbeth, I was not conscious of the leaden quality of the evening. The evening ends with a discussion of the nihilists; when the conductor says that the manifesto, as indeed all the behavior of these poor people, fills him with admiration, I say that, though I may feel boundless pity for these people, I cannot admire them. R. disputes my view and observes that one should not talk in this case of murder: these people act as one emperor against another in a war, placing mines. He cites Thrasybulus and a few others, I mention the fanatical Jesuit assassins, who also believed they were serving a cause. R. says no - these were treacherous, wicked people, whereas among the others he could very well visualize a loyal and good peasant countenance. When I say that murder is un-German, he laughs at me, saying that certainly the pensioners in the palace gardens are not murderers. Gladly will I remain silent and resign myself to it all, though it seems to me that since the advent of Christianity we should no longer be taking our example from the ancient world. Over coffee R. thought of Saint Paul and observed that he might have said, with W. [remainder of name illegible], “If only I had put my trust in blows”; he visualizes him on the Areopagus and says the Roman world still managed to produce such naive figures - unthinkable nowadays.