Thursday, December 22:
R. had a good night! He returns to me with a joke: “Salbe, wenig!” He had wanted to rub ointment on his foot, but there is not enough. In the morning he had been listening with enjoyment to the boy and his lively singing in the street. He finds his new reading entertaining, and he tells me many bits about Napoleon and Talleyrand. He works.
At lunch he makes a journey with us to Spain, which, a passing courier told Schnappauf, is much lovelier than Italy. Unfortunately his anger is aroused over coffee by Lusch’s fate and the arrangements being made by my father, whose rules of life are repugnant to him. Nor does one know, he says, in which direction Lusch is moving. But after going off for his siesta, he returns to tell me the new idea he has had: after the glowing of the blood he will bring down the curtain, darken the auditorium, and allow the music to play thus to the end.
We drive to the Villa Camastra. [A few words dealing with a false rhyme in Goethe omitted.] We meet Count T., and he conducts us around his enchanting estate.
But R. makes an error of diet (lobster at lunch), and there are many complaints in the evening; only gradually do we manage to get a conversation going. A sonata by Beethoven, played by Rub., brings us back to yesterday’s topic: how inferior this type of music is to painting, how conventional, and R. cannot understand how one can compare Mozart, for example, with Raphael, though he is well aware that in his music there are things which cannot be compared to other things, either.
A picture of Iphigenia at Tauris in the Illustrirte, with temple, Italy, carved lions in the background, shows all the wretchedness of mankind! It is true, says R., that Goethe depicted even these Scythians as very civilized people.
Late in the evening he talks about his absorption in his work - he says he literally sees ghosts, fifths, sixths. Rub. tells me of difficulties with his father and feels that a letter to his father from R. would improve matters; R., to whom I impart this, starts to write it right away, but the idea soon begins to worry him, and he even jumps out of bed in order to forget this task, which makes him feel rather uneasy.