Monday, October 23:
R. writes down some sentences for Frau Lucca. And at breakfast he complains about life, recalling all his relationships with publishers, with Voltz and Batz, and comparing these people to vermin which keep crawling out of one’s bed. When I have to laugh at that, he laughs, too, and we then go on to enjoy with a kind of amusement the phrases Frau Lucca uses to win him around.
He recalls A. Meissner, who used to say of publishers that they were the worst, because they counted on the vanity of authors and understood it so well. They look on R.’s magnanimity as foolishness and think they can easily have their way with him! “Who imagined I would ever make my fortune? In my early days I was a sort of beggar, was pleased when someone gave me something! Now everyone attaches himself to me in order to suck me dry.”
I translate what R. wrote at 4 in the morning and arrange the documents. Around 12:30 R. comes to fetch me, after having worked on his article, and we ride as far as the Rialto, where we buy some cheese, and then go on foot in the best and merriest of spirits as far as the railroad bridge, where we find our gondola. We meet a friendly woman who shows us the way when we go wrong. R. says, “We ought to have invited her for coffee immediately - she would have some interesting things to tell.”
At lunch the story of a child’s being rescued by a cat and a soldier causes R. to exclaim: “Yes, danger! That is the only thing which shows what humans are capable of. And yet they can still learn from animals.” He then tells his favorite animal stories and is pleased that the people here arranged a kind of triumphal procession yesterday for the doughty soldier! Around 3:30 we all meet in Saint Mark’s Square, but soon return home, since it is cold.
In the evening R. reads a few scenes from Twelfth Night (Malvolio) to us, to his and our very great delight. R. prefers Twelfth Night to As You Like It, in which he finds the characters too varied and too loosely connected; when I tell him that in performance this is soon corrected by the woodland scenery, he recalls the dismal performance we saw in Munich and deplores the Jewish influence on our art.