Monday, October 3:
R. had a good night, and he works. At lunch we have a medal maker, H. Wittig, who would like to do R.’s portrait, and whom R. teases on account of the blue spectacles behind which he withdraws. Then he says to him, “Do me in the act of creation, with an eraser in my hand.”
Cold weather, no outing. R. thinks of Venice but is put off by thoughts of all his acquaintances there. Since the medal maker has so done a portrait of the Pope, R. remarks on the latter’s mouth, “an imposing eating instrument fashioned for eloquence”; he says he is certainly incapable of mercy, and nowadays most mouths are like that.
Whist in the evening. Between games he goes to his desk and asks my father whether he has ever used the kettledrum below F. My father says no, since it does in my ear the passage for which he needs it: “ich sah ihn - ihn.” Then he plays the Overture to Lumpacivagabundus and is altogether very cheerful, if sometimes immersed in thought. “If only God lets me off unscathed!” he exclaims jokingly. “But he is torturing me dreadfully with the law of gravity.”