Sunday, November 12:
Letter from Malwida Meysenbug in Florence. I write to Fritz Br. Ottilie reports that she has engaged somebody for the children. R. works a little, but is not quite well. Visit from the little Bassenheim girl.
R. makes corrections in Die Wibelungen; he says he is in fact still thinking of doing something on Friedrich Barbarossa, in order to bring out this one single feature: his magnificent, barbaric, noble, and indeed divine inexperience. "And how remarkable it is," R. adds, "that this German Empire, the most inconceivable thing of all, is probably something which will outlast all monarchies."
"I am glad," he says, "that I have an eye for this connection between legend and history. In the popular view Caesar was connected with Ilium, and Saint Gregory of Tours speaks of a Frankish Pharamund who was a descendant of Priam. The compilation of the Nibelung Saga, which was hardly understood any more, began with Friedrich I. But with history one cannot take liberties; the historian cannot concern himself with such things--only the poet and the philosopher can do that."
In the Signale appears another of those familiar items of news about R.; it is claimed that he wrote to Napoleon asking that Tannhäuser be performed and at the same time abjured "his youthful buffooneries." R. is replying. In the evening the Republic.