Thursday, April 6:
R. had a good night, but he tells me he is still feeling down in the dumps. All the same I can be pleased with the way he is looking; yesterday he seemed so youthful-younger than everybody else! The children go to church, Siegfried wishes to stay for the whole 4-hour service and comes home with strange reports! The lawyer Gilio comes from Palermo to give me a report on the property situation. It is complicated, not very encouraging, and my fears increase! A drive with R. and Fidi; before that, a visit from Marquis Giuliano. Since, talking of the Semitic problem, he pointed out Italy's advantage in having absorbed them, R. becomes greatly agitated, and he then, through Herr Gilio, sends the Marquis a copy of Know Thyself. He jokes with me about it and says that the only way to treat such people is to make them mad, as Röckel once said about his brother Albert, to whom he had described the extreme consequences of the revolution as unavoidable necessities. In the evening we play whist in earnest; the table separated him from me, but after a while I ask to be allowed to play with him.
Good Friday, April 7:
A good night, but bad weather; R. complains humorously of having nothing but the B. Blätter to read, and he reads Wolz.'s article Present and Future. He says he understands Jouk.'s remark that it looks as if it had been written under the influence of hashish. When I told him recently I objected to this remark, he said, "Women always prefer hypocrisy," but he then added that one is in fact always a bit to blame for such things oneself. We go to church, the children and I, in very bad weather; it is quiet and empty, I am able to read the Gospel, and through its veil the cross speaks to me. And today I was in need of it. After an hour we return home; meanwhile R. had been reading The Classical Walpurgis Night with great delight, he then plays parts of Parsifal and finally the new melody. But when I go to take a rest, Lusch shows me a letter from her father which in offensiveness transcends everything so far experienced. However, under the influence of my hour of prayer and R.'s playing, I am able to accept it calmly and to dictate to Lusch a good letter to her father; I then try to forget it. R. visits me, opens the Shakespeare, and reads me various bits from Polonius in Lulu's presence. P.'s Farewell reminds R. of the Fahr wohl scene of the griffins and sphinxes. I am able to respond to this, but when we are alone I give him a summary of the scornful attitude Hans is adopting in the matter of Blandine. Supper is announced, R. jokes about our fasting, a curious story is told about the Bishop, and then we play whist! After a few games we leave the table to the children and talk about Hamlet, which on stage has an enervating effect, so awesome and magnificently truthful is it. And the same with all Shakespeare's tragedies-one leaves them exhausted and overwhelmed. The spirit of theater yearns for music, I observe, for the consummate ideality of sound. R. says in the modern theater that is certainly so, but things were different on the Shakespearean stage. The children say good night, we are left alone, and Hans's behavior is our topic, and what to do about it; R. wishes me, in the name of the children, to repudiate everything he has set aside for them and to forbid any further interference, and he wants to dictate it to me right away. I hesitate and promise to do it tomorrow, and we continue to reflect on it-for a long, a very long time! R. is violent in his expressions of repugnance and contempt, I tell both him and myself that, if I am to blame for such a deterioration, then may God protect me! We go off to bed. (R. thought today of Good Friday in the North, which is often very beautiful and touching with its emerging buds and little flowers-in the Asyl in Zurich, for instance, where the first thoughts of Parsifal came to him.) Along with this most serious of matters, the mail also brought the news that L. Lehmann has declined to take part, something I do not tell R., but which affects me greatly, for she is all but indispensable.