Sunday, June 11:
R. is in poor spirits in the morning-the cold, raw weather is inimical to him. He starts an article for the B. Blätter about his school idea, and he says to me he is curious whether I shall allow it to pass, since he grumbles so much in it. “When the Bashkirs are on the march,” he exclaims, “I no longer bother my head about music.” Over coffee the conversation comes back to racial questions; friend Joukowsky argues in behalf of the bourgeoisie, the Count attacks it, until, through R., it is made clear that the Count is not defending a social structure, but the purity of the blood. The weather forbids a walk; R. strolls around the garden with the dogs, mainly Marke, always the most faithful of his companions. In the afternoon he continues reading Hume (on R. II), and he remarks how superior the poet is to the historian; in history everything looks just cruel and crude, but the poet reveals the suffering individual behind it all and thus arouses our sympathy. At supper he quotes Humboldt’s statement on the difference between ancient and modern poetry-that modern poets fashion their characters from the inside, the ancients, on the other hand, from the outside, and this is what gives them the appearance of types, monotonous types even, but excellent with buskins and masks for an audience of 30,000. When Jouk. tells us that he is now going through Schiller’s dramas, we start to discuss them; in Kabale und Liebe R. sees a true picture of the times, and he speaks with some emotion of the German spirit which raised itself from a state of submission and devotion to take its place among the most liberated of spirits. “One could really be excused for ascribing a special mission to the German spirit.” “And it is not easy to renounce that.” When, in the course of further conversation about poets-who, as R. says, must envisage characters such as Faust and Mephisto, Don Quixote and Sancho, some in Dante and Vergil, and all in Shakespeare-Goethe is mentioned, Jouk. remarks that he can recognize no characters in Elective Affinities. “In an idealized experience,” says R., “that is a problem.”
In the evening he reads aloud his favorite scene between Falstaff and the Lord Chief Justice, and then he plays us parts of the last movement of Op. 111 and the whole first movement of 101 (A Major), to our enchantment; we all agree with him when he passionately declares that with these works Beethoven opened up a whole new world, all of it melody, conjuring up figures no eye could see. “But music is finished,” he exclaims sorrowfully, “and I don’t know whether my dramatic explosions can postpone the end. It has lasted only a very short time. Yet these things have nothing to do with time and space.” He recalls how in times of deepest trouble the German people discovered this refuge, this other world. Then he adds gaily how nice it is that one’s precursors always mean the most to one-it is always the works of others which come into his mind, never his own. At our request he then plays something of his own, the conclusion of Act I of Die Walküre. He expresses the hope that my father will play something to us, saying that he is the only person with whom he can make music. On coming in from the garden, he wrote down a symphonic theme: “All I need is quiet, then it swarms all around me.” In the evening he also looked at the score of Gluck’s Armide, and amid great merriment showed us the “idvon danse” [“here there is dancing”]. But over coffee he recalls the celebrations for his 70th birthday, which he spent entirely alone with Pfistermeister, a man whom he found repulsive, yet who was so important to him! I tell him how I imagined his life to be at that time, saying I could not but assume that his life was something of a gilded one. He says that, to judge by my father’s, it is no wonder I assumed that.