Tuesday, April 25:
R. had a good night. In our morning conversation we decide that one should only concern oneself with the very great or with “gifted eccentrics” such as Hoffmann, Carlyle, etc. Then we discuss Italian melody, and I tell R. that here it seems at times to be curiously effective, in spite of all its banalities - in some way in harmony with the air and the sky. R. agrees with me and says, “In our country everything must be locked in, and that produces a sound which has nothing to do with the visual world; it must all be locked in.”
While the children are in church at S. Marco I go to the Belle Arti, spend an hour there in great delight, and am discovered by R. standing in front of M. Marziale’s Supper at Emmaus, in which the man with the big hat makes a great impression on him, too - indeed, the whole picture, though Christ is handled rather conventionally. The small Bellini Madonna hanging next to it also gives him great delight, and then we rest in front of [Titian’s] Assunta, and it makes a glorious impression. When I say that it is a totality, rather like the 9th Symphony, R. says, “Oh, we have nothing so perfect in music - that is all experimentation.”
The glowing head of the Virgin Mary recalls to him his idea of the sexual urge: this unique and mighty force, now freed of all desire, the Will enraptured and redeemed. He is unable to do justice to God, the “bat,” though he feels he is finely painted. However, he is captivated by the apostles. What blissful moments do we spend there! Every time he regards the head he gives an exclamation of delight. Then we stroll through the other rooms; a picture I find very attractive, Thomas Touching Christ’s Wounds, has little appeal for him, but [Bonifacio’s] History of the Rich Man and the one Bellini Madonna please him greatly. We end as we began, contemplating the old altarpiece (Annunciation) in which, R. thinks, the Madonna looks like me when I have been weeping; he says she has the expression which only he knows in me. And in contented and exalted spirits we return home.
Over coffee R. talks about his future work, his greatest, in which he will loudly state what will become of a race which uses the most important, most powerful force of all, the sexual urge, merely as a basis for marriages of rank! I have some house affairs to attend to; R. goes to the Church of S. Marco with the children, and then once again with me.
Added two pages later but referred back to this point: “When we left S. Marco, R. went with Eva and Fidi to the beer hall, saw there the man who once before delighted him with his imitations of animal sounds, asked him to do them, gave him a lira, but with instructions to thank him in his own way - whereupon the man bursts into the most grotesque ringraziamenti [expressions of thanks].” A strange and inspiring impression, watching the surge of people making their way to the Lord’s shrine; the crypt, brightly illumined, presents a similar view, but in the midst of the crush, not leaning against a picture of Christ but as if merged, kneeling, into it, a woman praying! Amid all this unheeding, yet all the same pious bustle, such fervor! Was it despair, like Gretchen before the Mater Dolorosa, or passionate adoration? We could not see her face. But the image gripped our hearts: this was love, this was holiness. Much did R. say about the need to preserve churches as houses for the poor, places in which love feasts would be celebrated, but without the false pomp of the clerics.
In the evening he finishes reading Signor Formica to us, which unfortunately suffers somewhat from being too long. (A telegram from Neumann produces vexatious thoughts.)