Friday, July 21:
R. dreams about Tausig. Last week he dreamed about teeth falling out of his mouth in great numbers; I also dreamed of a broken tooth, and asked him what dire event was here foretold. Then comes Tausig’s death like a warning not to undertake anything in the outside world. I take it all very seriously.
Around noon R. tells me, “I have forced myself to work, but had little pleasure from it.” We come to talk about so-called cultural matters, and R. agrees with me when I tell him that I feel no trace of sympathy for the imposition of Christianity on others, Charlemagne and the Saxons, and that I would give the whole of discovered America in exchange for the poor natives’ not having been burned or persecuted. He tells of Radbod, the Prince of Frisia, who, with one foot already in the font, leaped back when he heard that he would not meet his heathen father in Heaven, Siegmund; that was why he had made his Ortrud, an inadequately converted heathen, a descendant of Radbod. The Roman conquest of countries was much more humane; they did not impose their religion.
When I go to lie down after lunch, R. comes to my room, having just heard from Loldi that Kos is dead and buried. He weeps. When I come downstairs, he is still much affected. In the evening he looks back on his whole relationship with Kos and weeps bitterly: “such a good, friendly creature, so dependent on one!”
The American and his wife visit us; very nice people. Fidi and the four girls are presented to them, the former a great success. Today Fidi’s first bath in the lake, and now he has “lake-bath” to add to his very limited vocabulary.
We then talk much, R. and I, about the English language, which I enjoy speaking, but against which R. has an insuperable antipathy; he says a German can only regard it as a dialect, not a serious language. We remark on the fact that only the Germans have retained sufficient objectivity to pronounce Greek and Latin names without reshaping them; that the Germans alone have a pronunciation which conforms to spelling. A very significant factor.
Shakespeare as triumph of the resurgence of the oppressed Anglo-Saxon spirit; he expresses, so to speak, the downfall of the Normans, those cunning, fierce, and powerful adventurers. This spirit culminated in Protestantism, since the Normans were also always associated with the Catholic church.
The name of Cromwell in Henry VIII makes a strange impression on R.: “One involuntarily thinks of an allusion, since Cromwell is shown as the only protector of Cranmer; then one tells oneself that just cannot be, and has the feeling of a poetic premonition.” Thus our conversation goes from one subject to another, but we always come back to Kos. R. could not have said goodbye to him, for otherwise he would never have agreed to it, and yet his imposed death was inevitable.