Sunday, August 19:
“He sighed, and his sighing was a prayer.” My wedding day, 20 years ago now. Went to church. Sermon on the healing of the deaf-mute. Oh, could my sighing but turn into a prayer and bring blessings on others!
When I come home from church, R. tells me he does not know whether he should surprise me, and he shows me the poem he has written for the idyll. Schott wants something; the poem moves me to tears, but the thought of publication dismays me. There is nothing I can say, since R. is clearly under compulsion to publish it. At lunch he says that he should have kept all his works for himself and his friends, since none of them had brought him joy after publication. In the evening R. reads us Shakespeare’s The Tempest.