Sunday, October 30:
Fidi takes four steps! — Letter to Prof. Nietzsche, recommending our student to him. Reduced family lunch, with Boni ill, Loulou in disgrace for negligence (she has lost the Sicilian fairy tales). A drive with the two little ones.
In the evening read Calderon’s La dama duende, spoke about all sorts of things concerning it, such as its subtle argumentation, this subtle playing with concepts being the only way, without the help of music, to convey love, for example. Calderon’s characters are not individuals, but masks, which the dramatist uses to express the most profound truths, but such art requires a theater in its prime, which Calderon could seize on in order to provide an insight into the world.
R. says he realizes that he will never write his projected plays (Luther’s Wedding, Bernhard von Weimar, in whom he recognizes Dietrich von Bern), since the form alone (verse or prose) is a problem he cannot surmount; nothing without music. He quotes with appreciation something Dr. Herrig wrote to him—that music is the law of gravity according to which everything moves or stands, and the poet is one who attempts to stand outside this law.
R. regrets that this promising young poet resorts to conveying a message as a substitute for the missing music. Calderon, he says, also conveys a message, but it is not a specific, politically historic one, it is the Christian, Catholic one, bearing the marks of a definite view of the world, and, as he had pointed out, Calderon had a flourishing theatrical period behind him to give it life. Also, such things succeed once and never again.