I came across a scrap of this on the first page of a book of poems a man in a coffee shop was sharing with me. The rest of the poems were his own, and while I tried to keep up a lively interest in them, my mind was turning the words of Rilke over and over and over and over...
"...I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life, even more than I was in Paris, where everything echoes and fades away differently because of the excessive noise that makes Things tremble. Here, where I am surrounded by an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they come from the seas, here I feel that there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable. But even so, I think that you will not have to remain without a solution if you trust in Things that are like the ones my eyes are now resting upon. If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge. You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you...as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer..."
Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 4
2 comments:
Howdy Amanda:
Gotta love anyone who reads Elliot and Rilke -- both. Brings me back to my salad days full of youth and angst and poetry.
It is been suggested that I contact you here as your email isn't on your profile or I was too bleary eyes last night to find it.
Wanna joi a skripture study blog? Check out skripture study and email me your response at kwakersaur
sorry I don't think that worked. Mail me at kwakersaur or if that still doesn't work its kwakersaur@lycos.com
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