Thursday, April 20:
R. had a good night. In the course of the day we return to a reply Fidi made to me yesterday; I had observed that I would like to die in Venice; Fidi: “I in Bayreuth, for, lovely as it all is, one likes best to go home.” R. praises this home-loving spirit and says, “Woe upon those who do not possess it!” I thank Fidi in my heart for understanding so well how to please me.
R. talks at breakfast about the Iliad, and he says the garrulous prolongation of the narrative is out of proportion to the cruelty of the legend, and from this he deduces that the latter is much older than the former. The narrative has a real Oriental breadth. The famous description of Olympus shaking as Zeus bows his head finds no favor in his eyes; as a dramatist he sees the foolishness of it, the lack of proportion. Then our thoughts turn to that poor boy, abandoned in Naples. In connection with him R. said yesterday that night was not dark enough to hide in, and today he quotes M[ephisto]’s terrible words, “She is not the first” - that, he says, is the consolation the world offers! He enlarges upon the chapter on marriage with which he is now much occupied, this urge of Nature: “At any rate,” he concludes, “it is always wrong to do anything against it.” He goes out and brings Boni a necklace, with which the girl is very pleased. Before that he informed Herr L[evi] that he would be passing through - he feels there is now much to be done at home.
After lunch we pay another visit to the Palazzo Desdemona, then we go on a lovely drive to S. Giovanni e Paolo. Delighting in the blue sky, we think of the North; he feels the weather will get worse and worse, since everything is moving toward the end of the world. At lunch we mentioned those friends who often reproached us for finding all other people dispensable; R. says, “What they are demanding is a sort of being in love, for we have shown them that we can be friends.” Turning to the children: “There is only one person who has ever been indispensable to me, without whom I should find it impossible to live, and that is your mother. I was mad about her,” he adds jokingly. At supper, in connection with the appalling pictures of the Madonna which one sees here, too, our conversation turns to Cath. and Prot., and R. solemnly and penetratingly explains the difference to Siegfried. Then he reads to us the conclusion of The Raven, without much enjoyment.