Tuesday, July 5:
Glorious day, but I am feeling very unwell, can teach the children only with an effort. R. writes various letters, I to Herr Simson in Berlin. After lunch drive to Hergeschwyl, we decide on tomorrow for the outing to Mount Pilatus, since I believe that only a change of air can help me. In the carriage R. talks of the bringing together of several themes in music; the ear perceives only one, but the addition of the others as accompaniment to it tremendously sharpens and heightens the impact of this single melody which one hears. In poetry no comparable effect is possible, except perhaps through equivocation, humor, irony, such as we have seen and admired many times in Don Carlos, for instance (scene between Don C. and Alba); the whole of Tasso is based on a similar effect. But in literature this purpose is achieved by keeping silent about certain things, in music by positive means; however, one must be capable of arranging the themes in such a way that the main melody can really be heard; Berlioz, for example, was not successful in the Scène au Bal, where the love motive sounds like the bass line.
In the morning R. reads me the passage in which Schopenhauer compares Plato’s ideas with Kant’s “thing in itself” and at the same time criticizes the misunderstanding caused in this connection by Kant’s successors.
In the evening I feel so ill that I have to take to my bed very soon.