Thursday, November 17:
R. did not have the best of nights, and he is put in a bad mood by being deprived of his bath this morning, but he is soon able to talk merrily to me about it.
[Added on the following page but referred back to here: “Fidi relates a melancholy dream; We were on a steamship, and R. as The Flying Dutchman was saying farewell to me and all the children; I had said goodbye to R. down in the cabin and was tranquil. Fidi thinks in order not to make them sad; Loulou and Eva in particular were weeping.”]
Then Shakespeare ad infinitum. R. is glad that we have the sonnets here, for they bring him closer as a person; R. imagines him to have been a cheerful man, “somewhat like me.” He goes to work, and around noon we set out to inquire about the condition of friend Rub. We soon return, and R. and I walk in the garden, where he talks to me about music, and in particular the last movements of symphonies, pointing out that in the F Major Symphony, for instance, Beeth. kept everything short, as if preparing to throw the whole weight onto the finale, the same in the C Minor. “In the Pastoral he meanders, and the finale of the A Major, however fond one is of it, allows one to say, in a certain sense, ‘This is no longer music’ but only he could do it. The last movements are the precipices; I shall take good care to write only single-movement symphonies.”
In the afternoon vexation for R. on account of visitors, interrupted walk. In the evening the 4th act of Part II.