Tuesday, October 24:
R. dreamed of a shining night sky in which he discovered three planets. The news that a comet can be seen in the sky has frequently woken him up in the night, but never at the right time (4 o'clock). Instead he was given his dream.
At breakfast we come back to what we read yesterday, and R. says this successful ruse committed against a decent man by means of his vanity shows how close to madness a human being always is - Malvolio through vanity, Othello through jealousy. R. works on his article, reads Count Robert of Paris, which he calls a childish piece of hack work. I fetch him around 12:30.
We go by gondola, rowed by S., as far as the Rialto, get out there, and continue on foot to Saint Mark's; we enter, go as far as the ancient horses, and ride home from the Bacino. A consultation I had before this concerning Blandine, and R.'s preoccupation with the nonpaying Voltz and Batz, give the day an unpleasant flavor, which, however, is as always overcome by our being together. A discussion of the comet, which the children have seen, brings us to a similar appearance in 1858, seen here then by R., and the conjectures surrounding it.
In the afternoon R. and I walk to the Rialto; the wide path from our house to the Church of S. Felice pleases him enormously, and he resolves to take frequent walks along it. We then ride to the Piazzetta; in the moonlit haze the whole place looks glorious, and our homeward journey through the narrow canals gives us a dreamlike joy. In the evening I begin Darn's history of Venice with the children, and R. also enjoys listening. Then he plays to Biagino some themes from Beeth. symphonies (A Major, C Minor Symph., andante movements) to show him what kind of melody it is which speaks to us 'like the greatest, most clearly defined thoughts of a poet.'
But once we are alone Voltz and Batz crop up again; R. talks of the spirit in trade today, which consists simply in trying to buy up cheap something one thinks valuable, then selling it dear; all business people, he says, are in fact united in their adherence to this principle. During our walk R. told me the Hungarian minister has declared that the Jews' struggle is that of the have-nots against the haves, and thus there is everything to be said for it. 'And that struggle is of course the most justified of all,' says R. Yesterday I mentioned to R. that the Indians regarded intelligence as the sixth sense, a concept by which the ideality of the world is so finely revealed, and I ask R. why this is not so with us. 'Because we are blockheads and have taken everything over from the Jews!'
As we are riding home in the moonlight, he thinks with pleasure of Fritz Brandt, who is fighting sturdily on all fronts, here against the iron curtain in theaters, there against a new Asphalia Theater. With regard to the latter, R. says, 'I agree with him, without knowing what it is all about,' and he is of the opinion that these days the only person that matters is the technician. Yesterday we talked about Semper's buildings, agreed that in most of them the motive was taken from Italy, and that he was not very skilful with his decorations: 'A man like that sees straight lines and nothing else.' Then he states his feeling that the true sphere of architecture is the church and the theater - hardly palaces.