Sunday, September 18:
In the morning R. much enjoys hearing the children romping about on the stairs. “Oh, I am too happy,” he calls out, “much too happy!”
In the newspaper we read that Paris will be able to hold out for a long time still, also that Toul and Strassburg are still defending themselves stoutly, and it is said that Bazaine is still well stocked with provisions. When will it end, how many more sacrifices must our men make?
I write to Prof. Nietzsche. Family lunch, during which our good Richter, when Wallenstein comes up in the conversation, says, “Yes, it is a wonderful play, if only it were not for that boring affair between Thekla and Max.” R. let him finish, then reproached him severely, indeed vehemently, for such crude statements. Recently he had said of Mozart that it was just as well he died, otherwise he would have fallen into mannerisms, or his ingratiating melodies would forever have made people incapable of grasping the art of Beethoven. R. reproached him earnestly for this, pointing out that Mozart had only just reached mastery when he died, and we could never know what treasures he might have given us. “One must not take the easy way and say that everyone dies at the proper time. What would I not give for Beethoven’s tenth symphony! Even if I, too, believe that everyone as a general rule is given the chance to show what he is made of, a truly great genius always dies too soon; it is not as with Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, minds of the second, third, or fourth rank.”
I read parts of the manuscript of his Beethoven and am filled with admiration for its depth of thought and clarity. R. says to me: “I regret after all not having compared Beethoven with Schopenhauer. There would have been a fuss, and yet in Beethoven’s world he does represent reason. I was recently reminded forcibly of Sch[openhauer]’s genius when I read what he had to say about the differences between human beings. He regards it as an ineptitude of Nature not to have created yet another species, since between gifted and ungifted human beings there is indeed a gap wider than between some human beings and animals. One only has to watch a theater audience, in which one person is utterly absorbed and concentrating, the other inattentive, fidgety, vapid. Between these two persons no understanding is possible, and therein lies the misery of the gifted person in a world in which he must regard as identical with himself a creature who no more resembles him than an ape does.”
In the evening we read Ovid, the day before, Lucretius. R. says, “It is in effect literature for the refined people in their villas, there is nothing popular about it, but it captivates through its erudition and wit—in short, its refinement.”