Sunday, October 1:
“For all guilt finds vengeance here below, and if you drink beer, it’s bound to cause you woe”: with these words R. greets me and at the same time tells me of his bad night, in which he had for company the croaking of the frogs and Faust, Act V. Of the latter he goes on to say that it is a sketch, that is to say, there is no continuity of action and the most significant moment could be dealt with in three-quarters of a page, whereas a very long time is spent on all the rest. He also discovered some completely incomprehensible passages in it, left in on account of the rhyme, and he also feels the pastoral description of the covetous bishop is rather out of place. It has enormous objectivity, he says, but also a great coldness, which makes it difficult to take an interest in Faust himself. Around 11 o’clock we are surprised by the young bridal couple, very happy, it seems. R. writes to Herr v. Bürkel, referring very seriously to the possibility, mentioned in this gentleman’s last letter, of an impending visit; he says how difficult it is for him to request from the King such favors as chorus and orchestra, knowing that the King himself will get no pleasure from them. At lunch much chatter in all languages; we go out for a ride around 4 o’clock; because of my bad foot I remain in the gondola. R. lets the children go into S. Marco and climb the tower, while he sits down again between the pillars. “I was Hagen on the Wasgenstein,” he says, adding that it is so lovely that he will one day be found lying dead there. It is impossible to describe all the things one sees there, he says, and, apart from a few foreigners, nobody takes any notice of one. In the evening the children go for another walk in Saint Mark’s Square; R. then talks to Stein and me about the book on Buddha, which he praises highly, saying it is much more significant than Koppen’s. Buddhism itself he declares to be a flowering of the human spirit, against which everything that followed was decadence, but also against which Christianity arose by a process of compression. Buddhism shows evidence of an extraordinarily youthful power in the human spirit, he says, not unlike the time when language was first invented. It exerts no compulsion of any sort; in consequence it has no church. The monk could return to the world if he no longer cared for the monastic life; no divine service, just atonement and good works. But it was this happy lack of organization which made it so easy for such a highly organized power as Brahmanism to oust it. For him, R. says, the whole of Christianity is contained in Holy Communion. But it is the fact that it was possible to found a church, and that so gloriously gentle a character as Saint Francis had humbly to bow before its leader, that makes Christianity so questionable. At lunch the English travelers had been referred to as “shopkeepers”; in this connection R. reflects that in England the most useful segment of society is regarded with contempt, and he remarks how far one has to go in order to say anything about it! And he frequently invokes Buddha and Rousseau; the first, who never said what he knew about, had been his inner vision. Then he talks about an article he intends to write on Italian church music and German military music, finding it utterly wrong that our army organization should be presented as something positively good. He says this constant linkage with prevailing conditions, as, for example, in C. Frantz, who even considers it a good thing that a part of Germany has remained Catholic, may appear all right at first, but soon one begins to feel that all depth is lacking; a person who expresses this opinion has never heaved a sigh of horror concerning the world.