Sunday, December 11:
Incalculable the duration of the war—who can love life when he experiences such horrors? Oh, God, individual suffering is unbearable enough, and now these mountains of sufferings! (Letters to Schuré and to Malwida, forwarding the cup with Loulou’s picture for Hans.) Christmas matters. Herr Fritzsch cables for the additions R. had promised for Beethoven, but it is impossible for R. to work to order; he writes to the publisher that he has none to send. En route he was constantly asking himself what he was still supposed to say—though previously he had been full of the additions he wanted to make.
In the evening finished Voltaire. “The deep source was missing, but it is the final flowering of the French spirit, as far as this can be taken; anything more—as attempted by J. J. Rousseau—just sounds false in them.” R. astonished by the rough and crude diction of the conversation (Boulainvilliers). (Letter from Karl Klindworth.)