Wednesday, July 13:
[Enclosed a newspaper clipping about a cup in the theater restaurant in Berlin, bearing an inscription to the effect that R. W. drank broth from it during the dress rehearsal of Die Walküre.]
R. and I have breakfast in the summerhouse; it is somewhat sultry, and R. is feeling the effects of yesterday’s lunch. We again come to the subject of Hans, and R. says, “I could be helped, he could not be helped.” I tell R. that this case makes me so clearly aware of the tragedy of life and the unatonable guilt of existence, that is to say, my guilt; for nobody had been better equipped than Hans to follow R., nobody more in need of guidance than he, and then I came between them, how can one ever close one’s eyes to my sin? And when R. tells me, “Your crime was a beneficial folly,” I may be enabled thereby to give him a look of serene contentment, but never to deceive myself about the misery of having ever been born!
All day long R. complains of his “poisoning,” and he is not looking at all well. Over coffee he talks about Indian customs, which look terrible because of the misuse to which they are put by the priestly caste in dealing with the people. In the evening we spend a long time sitting in the garden. R. gets up, strolls around a little, and I see him emerging, like a shining Wotan, from one of the paths; in his hands he is carrying a glowworm, which he brings to me. (In the morning, when I spoke of Hans’s curious attitude toward living with D., R. said: “Yes, people would prefer to hear you complaining, but in our house there reigns such horribly monotonous peace. The way we live together is something completely unknown to them. Think of your father, for instance, and his relationships with women.”)
In the afternoon he reads the interminable program of the Magdeburg Festival, including the description of the “Kaisermarsch.” “Nothing but misunderstandings!” he cries, and in our thoughts we see ourselves wandering like ghosts through the school, the things that will be done there in the name of Wagnerianism! [Written on a later page and referred back to this point: “In the garden in the evening I said to R. that I was reading a manuscript about Schopenhauer in which his theory of music is criticized. R. mentions the image of three-part writing, according to which the melody may lie only in the soprano part; this, viewed as a law, is a mistake, but one not worth mentioning, since the image is at the same time clever.”]