Sunday, June 19:
Talking about climate, R. says there is one way of having done with all that: dying. I agree with him, telling him how often this thought occurs to me when I am feeling too weak for life's battles. And the most consoling thought of all is that death is inevitable. Then we pass on to the things that one does, and how absurd it is to talk of compassion, since here below, active participation is everything. R. says that one can, however, achieve it with the aid of thought and by taking steps to avert terrible situations, for which Nature surely has no desire. At lunch the conductor Mottl from Karlsruhe; at one point we talk of Brahms, and R. admits his utter antipathy for him.
When R. goes off to rest, we ask the conductor to play us the third act of Tristan; he does so, and so well indeed that we are all utterly transported. Friend Jouk. leaves for a short excursion to Baden without saying goodbye. We tell R. of our experience. We spend some time in the summerhouse amid the treetops, where we are caught in a heavy shower of rain. In the evening R. wants Coriolanus, and he delights in it, saying, 'Here is race, this is something for Gobineau.' I say, 'Tristan is the music which removes all barriers, and that means all racial ones as well.' A letter arrives from Herr Forster in Leipzig, very carefully phrased.