Tuesday, January 5:
Morning. Evchen somewhat better, woke up only once during the night. From the moment of rising I was filled with great melancholy; harsh is the dream of life, my children, and in it I seem to myself a stranger. I fight against my depression. Evchen does not look well, but the sun is shining, and the day must certainly still hold some good and beautiful things in its lap.
Evening. A walk in the bright sunshine was a great help to me; from the top of the hill I was enraptured by the ring of snow-capped mountains, which suggested to me a mysterious, unmoving dance. Absorbed long in watching the picture, my spirit heard the music which higher beings reproduce for us in sounds. The transience of all individual existence, the eternity of the whole, was reflected to me in the blue mirror of the lake.
My deep inner strength restored, I summoned the Friend from his work and together we wandered up the hill; the magnificent Mount Pilatus looked like a spectral shadow. Upstairs with the children I discovered there had been negligence again regarding their diet, and it worried me greatly; not for fear of the consequences, but because of the servants’ indifference. The depression I had overcome returned and held sway over the whole day.
From town Richard brought a toy for the children, a nutcracker, which gave them much joy. He also brought a letter informing him that no one was willing to publish the translation of his essay on Rossini. This letter gave me a new insight into conditions as they are in Paris. We could see very clearly how far removed we are from all these bustling activities, and how little we now really know of what is going on in the world, what is now the prevailing atmosphere there.
Put the children to bed; Evchen lively, if not yet entirely recovered. Three cantos from the Odyssey to finish the evening. The splendid happenings seem like a dream picture to me, so vital and distinct, when the Friend reads them out to me; when I read them for myself, it is as if they were real, but thus everything is experienced at a remove. His voice and his manner encompass the immortal work like music.
“There is happiness, but we do not recognize it; if we do recognize it, we are unable to appreciate it,” says the Princess in Goethe’s Tasso. I both recognize and appreciate it. Not all the sufferings and miseries of this earth can affect that happiness which lies concealed deep within the heart like a pearl in an oyster, and even in my heaviest hours I have known this blissful pearl in my soul. Sleep well, my children, how your mother longs to see you all united!