Sunday, February 14:
Fine, bright Sunday. I wake up melancholy, but at peace with myself. Unfortunately R. reports that he slept badly, and that always pains me more than anything.
I have begun with great interest a charming book which R. received yesterday from Fräulein von Meysenbug. Only it has been so long since I last received news of the children. That makes me sad.
But spring is here. Yesterday it was windy and dull; today everything glistens, the birds are flitting about, trees budding, mountains, sky, and lake are transformed. It is very beautiful and one enjoys it; but it is too early. How many poor seeds will be sacrificed and birds driven away!
I find one of my main joys in tending my camellias. A real relationship is developing between these two living things and me, and I would not wish to have many flowers around me. These buds have received quite a few tears today.
That is of course foolish, for what is causing me suffering is only the consequence of my situation. Whoever steps beyond the boundaries must be prepared to be punished for it, however good his intentions, however difficult to achieve. Also, I ought to be glad when happiness deserts me; but mortals are weak and turn as avidly to pleasure as flowers to light.
After lunch we drove out toward Hergiswyl, with Loldi. Time caught up with us, but the sunset was splendid, and the sickle of the rising moon slender and frail above Mount Pilatus.
In the evening R. worked on his essay; I completed Fräulein von Meysenbug’s book.
At lunch R. asked me to develop the thought I had expressed in relation to Weber and Mendelssohn. He had observed that, when he had Weber’s ashes moved to Dresden, only eighteen years had elapsed since the composer’s death, whereas it was now 22 years since Mendelssohn died. Yet at the time it had seemed to him an eternity since the tragic news was received, while now it seemed to him as if M.’s death had been reported only yesterday.
I said that, apart from the difference which his own age might make to his feelings, it seemed to me that a genius such as Weber would very soon be imbued with the nimbus and halo of the past, whereas a personality such as Mendelssohn’s would be preserved in remembrance only because very many people who once knew him are still alive, and they keep the memory of him green.
[Added later: “The sorrow that mankind feels at the loss of a genius also adds to the illusion. Every time it is called to mind it produces pain, and that is doubled and tripled by Time. The passing ‘What a shame’ that a loss like that of Mendelssohn evokes from us does not engrave on our minds the sense of his being dead, and we must then always ask ourselves when he did in fact die.”]
Such a shadow does not grow, it can only disappear; the genius, however, is bound to become a legend immediately after his death. One can hardly believe that one knew him. The eternal worth of his work imprints itself also on the personality, so that it seems as if Life and Death have no real power over mortals such as Weber, Beethoven, and Mozart. It is as if they were of all time and had been with us only as the spirits they now are.
With less gifted human beings life is everything, and they can only be forgotten; they cannot dominate the realm of shadows. As long as mortals who once knew them continue to live, their earthly presence remains fresh, whereas their spiritual essence fades. One remembers and talks of them without awe. In the case of true genius it is the other way around: the spirit becomes ever more alive, while the form in which it was clothed eventually takes on the appearance of a shadow.