Monday, November 7:
Continual gray skies, which depress R., but he forces himself to work. (Yesterday evening arrival of the Brunswick sausage!) After lunch a drive with the children, Loldi in a brown silk coat with a collar—“the Marquis from Le Postilion de Longjumeau.”
In the evening the last three acts of Othello; unutterably moved; I tell R. that I shall never really get to know these plays, because I am always much too deeply affected by them to take in the precise details. R. reiterates his theory that “Shakespeare does not really belong to literature at all and cannot be compared with a poet and artist such as Calderon, for example. Through Shakespeare one can to some extent form a picture of a figure like Homer: what Shakespeare is to men of letters, Homer must more or less have been to the priests.”
I add in my thoughts: And what Richard is to our present-day men of letters and poets, who are quite unable to classify him. Lost my wedding ring on the way to Hergeschwyl!