![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elionwyrClearly, I've been obsessive about Rilke of late, who I know primarily through out-of-print books. Just finished a book of his love letters to one of his many ladies - and really, it leaves me feeling grateful for used book stores, as I don't think I would ever have discovered this beauty elsewhere. And yes, it would be most wondrous to receive such letters..
Baur au Lac, Zurich
Friday, September 17, 1920
Friend, oh my Friend,
Am I then condemned to make you suffer so much? I beg of you, call a short truce with your pain, and look: this is still life, the very same that carried us to the peaks of our hearts. You cannot accuse it of cruelty without at the same time charging it with having been so generous.
Fortunately, the double letter I sent you Wednesday will have reached you yesterday; has it lightened your ordeal a little? Oh, if only, by caressing the paper between my hands, I were able to transmit some of that infinite tenderness of which I have never been able to give you enough; I even wonder whether in fact you have had any, my hands having remained, Dearest, so inexhaustibly brimming with it. In keeping silent I had hoped that, all unprompted, you would take up our accumulated wealth and put it to the greatest variety of uses. That is what you must try to do; it is what I compel myself to do, as best I can; we receive such blessings only at the price of a firmer commitment to life, and we must glorify it, even through our tears. Try, my Friend, act upon what you have become, summon up the curiosity to know and to use your new heart straight from the crucible of metamorphosis innumerable! You will gradually gain strength as you summon it. Soon there will be a lull, and even a sense of well-being.
Sweet friend, I leave R[agaz] in two hours, I think I must stay until Monday - I will keep you informed of all my movements...
I carry with me still the little handkerchief steeped in your tears; I carry it as a symbol that all of your tears, Friend, all of your tears will forever dry on my heart...
And allow me to believe, my Love, that I sustain you day and night, and that you never feel for one moment that I have abandoned you.
- Rene'
Rilke was not a saint. He moved from lover to lover, searching in these affairs for an ideal love that could exist within the confines he insisted upon - he oscillated between seeking the solitude his writing demanded and seeking this idealized woman. He sought a Sappho, or a Bettina von Arnim - "victims of unhappy love affairs" who had "risen above the need to be loved in return". Inevitably, he would move from being passionately involved with his lover to sternly deciding his work must come first, and she of the moment must be put aside, converted into a friend that supported rather than sapped his creativity. The pain of his self-inflicted solitude was real - but, it has to be admitted, so is his almost obsessive need to dictate the boundaries and directions of his relationships.
So. There's a darkness to how he handled his heart, and the hearts of others. But his sincere affection and concern for his lovers was, I think, indisputable.
"...Speaking of hedgerows, I must describe a phenomenon to you. While picking some little flowers for you on Saturday morning, I noticed a drop of very sparkling water on a branch amongst the hedges. I felt the temptation to take it upon my finger, to drink this morning dew, a sweet and humble communion with nature - on the tongue, the drop possessed the slightly hollow limpidity it expressed to the eyes - but imagine this: in the afternoon, I see another drop just like that one in the same place, again I take it up...and it was bitter and salty like a real tear...Oh, Beloved, have you been crying in my hedgerows?"
1921
Baur au Lac, Zurich
Friday, September 17, 1920
Friend, oh my Friend,
Am I then condemned to make you suffer so much? I beg of you, call a short truce with your pain, and look: this is still life, the very same that carried us to the peaks of our hearts. You cannot accuse it of cruelty without at the same time charging it with having been so generous.
Fortunately, the double letter I sent you Wednesday will have reached you yesterday; has it lightened your ordeal a little? Oh, if only, by caressing the paper between my hands, I were able to transmit some of that infinite tenderness of which I have never been able to give you enough; I even wonder whether in fact you have had any, my hands having remained, Dearest, so inexhaustibly brimming with it. In keeping silent I had hoped that, all unprompted, you would take up our accumulated wealth and put it to the greatest variety of uses. That is what you must try to do; it is what I compel myself to do, as best I can; we receive such blessings only at the price of a firmer commitment to life, and we must glorify it, even through our tears. Try, my Friend, act upon what you have become, summon up the curiosity to know and to use your new heart straight from the crucible of metamorphosis innumerable! You will gradually gain strength as you summon it. Soon there will be a lull, and even a sense of well-being.
Sweet friend, I leave R[agaz] in two hours, I think I must stay until Monday - I will keep you informed of all my movements...
I carry with me still the little handkerchief steeped in your tears; I carry it as a symbol that all of your tears, Friend, all of your tears will forever dry on my heart...
And allow me to believe, my Love, that I sustain you day and night, and that you never feel for one moment that I have abandoned you.
- Rene'
Rilke was not a saint. He moved from lover to lover, searching in these affairs for an ideal love that could exist within the confines he insisted upon - he oscillated between seeking the solitude his writing demanded and seeking this idealized woman. He sought a Sappho, or a Bettina von Arnim - "victims of unhappy love affairs" who had "risen above the need to be loved in return". Inevitably, he would move from being passionately involved with his lover to sternly deciding his work must come first, and she of the moment must be put aside, converted into a friend that supported rather than sapped his creativity. The pain of his self-inflicted solitude was real - but, it has to be admitted, so is his almost obsessive need to dictate the boundaries and directions of his relationships.
So. There's a darkness to how he handled his heart, and the hearts of others. But his sincere affection and concern for his lovers was, I think, indisputable.
"...Speaking of hedgerows, I must describe a phenomenon to you. While picking some little flowers for you on Saturday morning, I noticed a drop of very sparkling water on a branch amongst the hedges. I felt the temptation to take it upon my finger, to drink this morning dew, a sweet and humble communion with nature - on the tongue, the drop possessed the slightly hollow limpidity it expressed to the eyes - but imagine this: in the afternoon, I see another drop just like that one in the same place, again I take it up...and it was bitter and salty like a real tear...Oh, Beloved, have you been crying in my hedgerows?"
1921
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-02-14 05:07 pm (UTC)It says a lot to me.
Date: 2003-02-14 05:23 pm (UTC)And perhaps the warning is louder right now.
I've always loved his writing.
I found a book of his poetry in a used book store many years ago, and it's always spoken very loudly to me...I'm just finding more comfort, and more reminders of love, in it these days.
And, as I said, a warning of sorts that I don't know I can adequately express...
Re: It says a lot to me.
Date: 2003-02-15 12:38 pm (UTC)Re: Notebooks
Date: 2003-02-15 12:48 pm (UTC)It's said to be one of his masterpieces, so it's (obviously) well worth reading - though he himself described it as "pain-filled" and described it thusly:
"..I have often had to take it away from young people, forbidding them to read it. For this book, which seems pretty near to demonstrating the conclusion that life is impossible, must be read against the grain, as it were. If it contains bitter reproaches, it is not against life that they are aimed; on the contrary, it represents the continual recognition that it is through lack of strength, through distraction and inherited mistakes that we lose almost entirely the countless riches of the present that were our birthright."
Personally, I'd recommend Letters to a Young Poet or just about any collection of his poetry. :)
Re: Notebooks
Date: 2003-02-15 01:13 pm (UTC)Re: Notebooks
Date: 2003-02-15 03:30 pm (UTC)I hope you like. :)
Re: Notebooks
Date: 2003-02-17 08:34 am (UTC)Re: Notebooks
Date: 2003-02-17 10:18 am (UTC)