Thursday, January 28:
Tolerable night, not much sleep, but no worrying thoughts, either. Read Devrient’s book while with the children. Much impatience with it, but much enlightenment; this account is like a confirmation of what R. wrote about Mendelssohn in his essay. Spoke about it to R. at table.
He goes out, I am feeling weak again and have to lie down. Then with the children, who are lively and well behaved. Since R. reproaches me for not having been out of doors, I go out when it is already dark; the countryside is wrapped in gray dusk, I feel that the Greek underworld must have looked like this, and I could literally see the forms of its heroes as they wander across the calm gray water and vanish into the mists of the mountains and the clouds.
Gradually the sky cleared, a pale star twinkled silently, the first I had seen this evening; “Greetings, gentle star, guide my fate kindly, shine benevolently on my children.” As I spoke these words the star suddenly disappeared—was it because a tear dimmed my eye or because the emerging moon obscured its little light?
“Very well, you are as unyielding as all the rest, like them you teach me submissiveness.” Then it came back into sight. “Are you now appeased? Give me a friendly sign that you will be merciful to my children”—and suddenly I saw Richard standing in front of me: he had been looking for me everywhere, calling out Siegfried’s melody to me in all directions!
Joyfully I acknowledged the sign; the whole countryside was gleaming, the clouds vanquished by the moon, the underworld atmosphere dispelled; I no longer looked for my little friend, having the large one at my side as pledge of the gentle direction of my fate.
R. said if only I knew all the things he called out to me when I was not there. Alas, I know that he loves me.
In the evening he dictates to me again, and we part affectionately.
The reason Nature exercises so beneficent an effect on us lies surely in the fact that it makes us so closely aware of how insignificant the individual is. Thousands of years have passed in which the mountains have stood unconcerned in the face of human suffering, the stars shone down indifferently on earthly woe. In the city, however, the individual thinks of himself as something special and important; the razing of houses, the erection of buildings, all the unrest he unceasingly causes, gives him a deceptive sense of his significance, and it is in this deception that his agitation lies; for is not Death telling him every hour that in fact he is nothing?