Friday, July 7:
Fine weather again, at last. Yesterday the doctor we had summoned to examine Fidi set our minds at rest concerning his bone formation, and at the same time gave us his views on the weather: for the past year, since August, northerly and southerly winds have been battling together in our regions, and this battle has given rise to all the clouds.
When I tell R. of my mother’s condition, that she hits out and raves, then becomes quiet and gentle again, R. says: “How dreadfully human beings behave! No animal in a fury can behave like that; it is closer to Nature, which protects it; but what happens to a human being when his intelligence begins to waver, we can now see in your mother, whose intelligence made her so lovable and estimable. That is why we always look to the common people, in the hope that they have remained closer to Nature.”
While I am working with the children in the garden, he calls out to me, “I have had a wonderful idea, but I can’t tell it to you.” I run up to his room, and there he informs me that the theme I had already heard and liked, which comes on Siegfried’s sudden appearance from the bushes, is the same one which the vassals will sing when they laugh at Hagen; a sort of Gibichung song which expresses the curious and genial mood of Hagen. How blissful I feel when he tells me things like this. It is as if there has never been sorrow and can never be sorrow.
A walk, and great tiredness in the evening.