Tuesday, March 7:
R. tells me jokingly that “Frau Minna” appeared on his horizon in the form of congestions: “Bon, je sais ce que c’est” [“Good, I know what it is”], he told himself as he awoke, and he took some valerian. He says that in his dream the question of claiming a forgotten fee in Paris kept recurring.
At breakfast he comes back to the problem of race and says that it has been changed by women, for example, when an Aryan marries a Semite woman, the Creole race appears. “And art,” I add with a smile. From there our conversation turns to the Sistine Chapel; R. deplores the painting of all the walls and ceiling, saying that he finds it confusing, in a certain sense tasteless. “As in a certain sense Shakespeare’s Henry VI could also be called tasteless,” I observe, and I attempt to explain my feelings about this work. From there our conversation turns to painting in general and its unfortunate position today: intended as a still and sublime vision, it is now placed on exhibition.
Since I am reading the 1st act of Egmont to Fidi, I ask R. to play the song Die Trommel gerühret, and this virtually dominates our whole day with its awesome bravado. When I tell R. that I much prefer it to Freudvoll und leidvoll, R. says: “Yes, because poems like that cannot be set to music; music cannot convey concepts. Lyric poetry!” he exclaims; “only drama exists.” “And absolute music,” I say. “Which is a kind of drama. I really believe that: a theme and a countertheme, which combine in a dance. Joyful, sorrowful, thoughtful, there is no music to be found for those words: at most a repetition.” Our friend Levi’s remark that only bad poems can be set to music is in this sense correct, he feels. At lunch there are only the three of us, since the girls are on an outing, and all three of us then drive to Terra Rossa, which pleases R. greatly.
In the evening R. relates to us some things from his present reading, Dumas’s Les Garibaldiens, and later in the evening he tells me of Garibaldi’s greeting to his star before the entry into Palermo. “This is what matters,” R. continues, “whether one is capable of such impulses, or whether they are completely foreign to one.” When the lines “Who can know the pangs of woe,” etc., came into his mind today, he added, “A bit artificial.” In the evening he recalls the performance of Egmont in Zurich under his direction, for which he himself wrote the linking text. On our journey home, during which he tells us all sorts of things about Garibaldi, he exclaims: “The French and their generosity! Under the republic they had Rome shelled, whereas the English freed Sicily from Bourbon dependence. They have an effective public opinion, a Parliament to represent it.” He tells me of Gladstone’s resignation.