Sunday, July 14:
In the little church, sang hymns with much emotion, along with the Hummelbauer people; from such community comes devoutness, for what one feels in seeing these poor people, and what this divine service in song gave to me, that is prayer. As we sang We Have a God Who Helps Us, I had to think of the times when the Protestants, with this cry on their lips, laid down their lives for their beliefs. I thought of Luther and his gigantic struggle; and the undecorated church, the standing, not kneeling, congregation, the sung prayer, put me in a God-fearing mood.
How gladly do I make contact with the world in this way, how well I understand their feelings and their faces! Unfortunately the “Herr Hofrat’s” sermon was not at all in harmony with the mood; he drew distinctions between justified and unjustified concern for one’s life, talked a lot about Satan. How dearly I should like to be a priest among the peasants, and how differently I should speak to them!
R. works. Family lunch. I am still not well; with the little ones in the park, Loldi indoors on account of inflamed eyes. Never has birdsong so affected me as here; I feel as if I were hearing it and understanding it differently from hitherto, like a strange call. I should like to feel no more evil and follow the call.
I thought yesterday that every work of art should speak to us like birdsong, incomprehensible, unanswerable, yet at the same time understood and silently answered. For me art is all but spoiled, since for its sake one comes so much into contact with people, and not with good people. But nothing can spoil for me the song of the birds, the shadows of the trees, the blooming of flowers, and I feel a close relationship with the poor people who cultivate these things here, amid sweat and travail. The Duke is both philanthropic and unsociable, a condition to which life brings good people.
In the afternoon Herr R. comes and makes music with R.; everything inside him in a very raw state, which must be developed. In the evening wrote to Marie M.