Friday, May 26:
Letter from my mother; in the way the French have of never being able to stop admiring themselves, she finds “beaucoup de vie dans nos folks et nos ruines.” R. says that I should write to her that the trouble on both sides is that we have been judging by appearances; we had long regarded the French as something special, and they judge us by our jagged outlines and despise us. My mother writes that Claire belittles the Germans.
In the A.A.Z. an article by Karl Gutzkow, who is not above comparing Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and a picture by Makart!
Did not allow the children to work much, for they are unwell again; the whooping cough is starting all over again, it is all so hopeless! Sitting on the terrace over coffee, R. again speaks about Beethoven. In his story he described him as gaunt, which he does not appear to have been; rather he was dumpy. Yet, R. says, he must have been able to make a fascinating impression, so utterly unique was he.
“I shall surely leave the world with my great longing to have seen and known a man I truly venerate, who has given me something, unsatisfied. In my childhood years I used to dream I had been with Shakespeare, had conversed with him; that was my longing finding expression.”
Everything in Paris is burning.