Wednesday, October 11:
R. slept well. Around noon he sets out with the girls (Loldi and Eva) and visits the church of S. Giorgio dei Greci, which strikes him as pompous, with its black Madonna and Saviour! He talks about it at lunch, inquires about the Maria Aegyptiaca, and then, stimulated by the presence of Herr Hausburg, goes on to talk about the three gods of Lithuania.
We then go out after 4 o’clock; the view of the canal from beneath the Rialto Bridge also gives him very great pleasure. The bridge itself with its broad steps, indeed the marble steps everywhere here, give him a sense of security, and he holds to his opinion that no other town can compare with Venice. At supper, looking back over our year, he says, “We are living just like Jews” - he cannot remember where he was a year ago! He takes delight in Fidi’s rowing, then in the walk on the Piazzetta. He advises the new tutor to be serious, since the good young man invariably shows his embarrassment by grinning.
In the evening he tells us, saying in connection with Tribschen, “Those were happy days,” that he has been rereading the final scene of Faust, Part One. He says Goethe took very good care never to wander along these paths again; Shakespeare never did anything of this sort; R. says he would describe his works as political-historical tragedies, whereas this was a social-historical tragedy. He recalls having seen Charlotte von Hagn play Gretchen in Riga, and she made a very great impression on him. Later he talks about W. Scott’s novel The Pirate and says he makes the inhabitants of the Shetland Isles talk in the Ossianic bardic style of the previous century, though the Icelandic sagas have shown us completely different customs.