Monday, October 16:
R. had a good night’s rest, and we have some sunshine, albeit deceptive, for the sirocco is still blowing. Talking of our good Stein, R. regrets that he said so little about himself and his father, and, generalizing on this subject, he remarks to me how little value silence has, how much greater evidence of pride and tranquillity is shown when one talks openly to confidential friends about oneself and one’s relationships.
We come back to the subject of race, wondering which theory is right, Schop.’s or Gobineau’s. R. feels they can be reconciled: a human being who is born black, urged toward the heights, becomes white and at the same time a different creature.
At 12:30 we go by gondola - rowed by Fidi - in the direction of La Giudecca, for which R. does not much care, and get out not far from the Belle Arti; we meet the Gravinas and return home via the Piazza Manin, from which we turn off into a narrow lane to see the lovely steps which R. so likes - they remind him of Pavia, of the Hohenstaufens. It was a pleasant walk, yet R. had a spasm on our return. He has lunch somewhat later than usual, and a letter from Frau Lucca - unfortunately delivered directly to him - upsets him again!
The two of us go to the Piazzetta and walk a little on the Riva, but he soon sits down with me beneath the arch of the Doge’s Palace; the bricks and the very low tide present him with not a very pleasing view! We then sit down again beneath the portal between the columns, and, gazing at the tower, from which a young foreigner was said to have thrown himself this morning, R. says, “He did the right thing!” The children meet us, their attention attracted by R.’s whistling the 8th Symph. At lunchtime today, when we returned home, Lusch was playing [Beethoven’s] E Minor Sonata; R. remarked how many ornaments it contains, regrettable after such a theme.
In the evening he sees Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte lying on the piano (left there by Herr Hausburg); he shows me the “Venetianisches Gondellied” in which Mendelssohn, leaving out the main part, uses the refrain of the Otello barcarole and passes it off as a folk song. Then R. tells me that, when he first heard the Scherzo of the 9th, it reminded him of Auber’s tarantella. In the morning he remarked to me that rhythm is a completely new discovery, a Luther chorale contains hardly any rhythm, though it is splendidly declaimed; and he reminds me of the tarantella we saw danced in Capri, how unrhythmic and unclear the music was. He dictates to me his letter to Frau Lucca in French, in order to put an end to the nuisance.