Saturday, June 10:
R. slept well, we have a peaceful breakfast, after which I set out to make some calls and encounter difficulties with Dean Caselmann on the subject of duplicate weddings. My report on this at lunch leads to a conversation about the two confessions; R. tells the Count that, in defending the incarnation of Assyrian Semitism, he is contradicting himself; Protestantism is the final expression of the Germanic consciousness, and even the Protestants had been too few in number. Over coffee R. shows us some things in the India volume and says how pitiful Europeans look in comparison. I mention Greek temples as an example to the contrary; he says I am right and enters into a very lively description of the Greek character, which, he says, was unique in the world in terms of talent and vitality, since in this very small entity every part was alive.
Later we set out on a walk, R. and I, but are caught in the rain; it is also cold, and R. shows me some wilting buds, the summerhouse is very damp; we return home, much depressed. But I soon recover, and the sun also emerges for a while. R. comes up to me and complains of our bad luck; I tell him about a letter from Herr Francke, but R. does not wish to renew his contract, on account of Herr Neumann. Many times today R. complains of finding the world so unpleasant, he says he feels like giving everything up and moving permanently to Italy; he told me yesterday that he was in such despair about everything that it would not worry him at all if Fidi were to go his own way entirely. Reproductions in the Ill. Zeit. of portraits of Martin Luther and his wife by Cranach do not please him, either. He leaves me, telling me, however, that I should come soon to see what he is doing. When I go down to the salon, he is reading Hume’s History of England. At lunch he told us that he was occupying himself as, according to the Talmud, the Almighty occupied Himself: He read the Bible; R. was reading his own writings. And he humorously compared himself to the Almighty in the Faust prologue, in which, according to him, God was Mephisto.
He does not much enjoy the evening; the Count talks a lot about Sweden and Norway, and R. finds the French language, with its lack of accentuation, disagreeable. But he reads to us two sagas from Lachmann’s collection, the ones about the skald in America who, without revealing his identity, gave the Icelanders a ring and a sword for Thurida; both he and the rest of us are completely gripped by the magnificent character of these things.