Sunday, November 12:
R. slept well. A letter from Tesarini, asking for a loan, vexes him; he remarks that he is hoarse, something one should not be, and that reminds him of Falstaff’s reply to the Lord Chief Justice and he bursts out laughing. But then he says, “I should never dare to make Shakespeare speak, or even Luther, in fact no historical figure.” We come back to Stein’s dialogues; he finds the invention of the game in G. Bruno good, but then again not. Then he talks once more about the article on Gobineau, as always with praise. As we take our seats in the gondola he says, “You must write an obituary for me too!” and before that he tells me I ought to write the Bär. Blätter entirely by myself, and other friendly jests of that sort. He also comes to me before working to discuss and correct “premonition of decay.”
Around 1 o’clock we ride to the Papadopoli gardens, in which R. is pleased by the parrots and the pretty borders, although he says one feels no need for gardens in Venice. At lunch he sings something from the E-flat Major Quartet, asks Herr Hausburg whether he recognizes it, and, when the latter says yes and observes that it is difficult to understand: “Not to understand, for it is all melody, but to listen to precisely, since it is all so concentrated; it is like losing the whole sense of a written passage by failing to hear one word.” In the Scherzo of the 9th he finds a turn which reminds him of one in the Scherzo of this quartet. But he does not wish to hear it played, and particularly not by Germans, who always get the tempi wrong. In the afternoon he goes to bed, since he is feeling rheumatic pains; he reads the history of the Persians, which he finds very absorbing. I am with him, and, knowing that his condition is not serious, I am happy. Then I read 2 acts of Macbeth to Siegfried.