[1010W-{3/23/80} CD Vol. II, p. 456]
[P. 456] {FEUER?} “A vegetarian pamphlet leads R. to that subject over coffee, hedescribes what things would be like if we stopped murdering animals: ‘Perhaps we should have no more art, but if we were morally more secure, that would be no hardship. But he does not wish to have anything to do with the vegetarians, since they always have the utility principle in mind. When Herr v. St. says they are mostly lacking in compassion for the poor, R. replies, ‘It is very difficult to preserve one’s compassion for other people, even for the poor, since the thought must always be in one’s mind that, given the chance, they would be just as cruel as the more fortunate ones.’ ‘The only thing that still remains fascinating about the human race and is responsible for the poets’ not withdrawing their attention entirely from it, is its occasional heroism, instances of which, though in a confused enough way, come to us like glimpses into a lost paradise … .” [1010W-{3/23/80} CD Vol. II, p. 456]
[1011W-{3/27/80}CD Vol. II, p. 458]
[P. 458] {FEUER} “When, referring to the ‘Iliad’ and the ‘Nibelungenlied,’ I say toR. how sad it is that, since our old legends are not connected with our religion, we are constantly dependent on foreign influences, he replies, “That is why music is the only thing.’ “ [1011W-{3/27/80}CD Vol. II, p. 458]
[1012W-{4/27/80}CD Vol. II, p. 470]
[P. 470] {FEUER} “Much talk about Dante in the past few days, R. is put off by hisreceding forehead, and the rigid dogmatism in his poems is disturbing. He says there are certain things human beings have been able to express only in symbols, and the church has committed the crime of consolidating these and forcing them on us as realities through persecution; it is permissible for art to use these symbols, but in a free spirit and not in the rigid forms imposed by the church; since art is a profound form of play, it frees these symbols of all the accretions the human craving for power has attached to them. But Dante did not follow this method.” [1012W-{4/27/80}CD Vol. II, p. 470]
[1013W-{4/28/80}CD Vol. II, p. 471]
[P. 471] {FEUER} “ … poets, too, are cruel – Homer, for example; they depict heroism in all its cruelty and heartlessness, and then someone comes along like Jesus, who is all heart. He is at his greatest when he is bitter, when all his fury breaks out, he will separate the father from the son, everything will wither – then he shows his divinity. Of all the arts, music alone is entirely detached from all that, pure and redeeming.” [1013W-{4/28/80}CD Vol. II, p. 471]
[1014W-{5/9/80}CD Vol. II, p. 475]
[P. 475] {FEUER} “In the morning we talked at length about religion and art. R. describes how art works in metaphors and allegories as such but at the same time conveys to the emotions the truth
