Monday, September 11:
Letter from Prof. Nietzsche. Loulou had a better night, the danger is past; R. still suffers with his foot.
While I am still in bed and R. comes to wish me a good morning, he takes my hands and stretches them out, as if I were on the cross, at the same time saying, “I think that this horrible form of death did serve to spread Christianity; one would not have been able to accept a hanged man as a symbol; here one saw the mortal being in suffering. Just dangling from a rope would have been impossible.”
A woman was here yesterday, well dressed and of a pleasant, modest appearance; she said her life’s wish had been granted, she had seen the house in which R. Wagner lived. In the afternoon we drive into town to make purchases for the children.
As we ride home R. sinks into melancholy: “How pleasant it was for a person like Titian in the Venice of his day, what a part he could play in communal life, but our communal life, how pitiful! In Cologne Herr Hiller, in Dresden Herr Rietz, in Munich previously Herr Lachner, that is conformity, that is a harmony which people like ourselves can disturb only sporadically.” In the morning we had seen in the Illustrirte Zeitung a picture of the Beethoven Festival under Hiller, which was truly alarming. Talking of Joachim and his wife, R. says, “One might think: Here are two capable artists, here only good music will be played; but what emerges?”
Read a lot from the Greek legends to Loulou. Letter from Fritz Brockhaus.