What touches me - Rainer Maria Rilke

Mililea

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
I just came across a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke and it touched me. It comes from one of his letters. It's really difficult to translate his words into English. That's why I'm also sharing the German text at the same time. I think there is a lot of truth in living into the answer by constantly living the questions. But see for yourself... :flowers:

One must give things
Their own, quiet,
undisturbed development,
which comes from deep within,
and can't be pushed
or accelerated by anything;
everything is to be carried out -
and then
giving birth...
Maturing like the tree that does not urge its sap
and stands confidently in the storms
of spring,
without fear,
without fear that no sommer behind it
might come.
He does come!
But it only comes to those who are patient,
who are there,
as if eternity lay before them,
so carefree, so still, so far...
One must have patience
against the unsolved in the heart,
and try to love the questions themselves,
like locked rooms,
and like books written in a language
in a very foreign language.
It is a matter of living everything.
If you live the questions,
perhaps one lives gradually,
without realising it,
one day, without realising it.
into the answer.

German Version:

Man muss den Dingen
Die eigene, stille,
ungestörte Entwicklung lassen,
die tief von innen kommt,
und durch nichts gedrängt
oder beschleunigt werden kann;
alles ist austragen -
und dann
Gebären...
Reifen wie der Baum, der seine Säfte nicht drängt
und getrost in den Stürmen
des Frühlings steht,
ohne Angst,
dass dahinter kein Sommer
kommen könnte.
Er kommt doch!
Aber er kommt nur zu den Geduldigen,
die da sind,
als ob die Ewigkeit vor ihnen läge,
so sorglos still und weit ...
Man muss Geduld haben,
gegen das Ungelöste im Herzen,
und versuchen, die Fragen selber lieb zu haben,
wie verschlossene Stuben,
und wie Bücher, die in einer sehr fremden Sprache
geschrieben sind.
Es handelt sich darum, alles zu leben.
Wenn man die Fragen lebt,
lebt man vielleicht allmählich,
ohne es zu merken,
eines fremden Tages
in die Antwort hinein.
 
I read "Letters to a young poet" of Reiner Maria Rilke when I was a teenager and I was very touched. As far as I remember I was particularly impressed with what he said about love.
Some quotes:

"It is also good to love, for love is difficult. To love another person is perhaps the most difficult task for each of us. It is the most challenging, ultimate test and trial, the supreme work for which all other work is only preparation. That is why young people, who are novices in everything, do not yet know how to love. They have to learn it."

"love requires, for extended periods and into the far reaches of life: solitude, intensified and deepened solitude for the one who loves. Love, at first, does not mean anything like abandoning oneself, surrendering or becoming one with another person. (What would be a union of two unresolved, unfinished, and still disorganised beings?) Love is an eminent occasion for an individual to mature and become something in and of himself, to become world, to become world for himself for the sake of another. It is a great and extravagant behest that singles him out and summons him to reach further and become more. When love is given to them, young people should use it only in this sense as the obligation to work on themselves

"if we endure and submit to this love as a challenge and an apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in the facile and frivolous games which people use to hide from the most serious gravity of their existence, then those who come long after us may perhaps experience a hint of progress and relief."

"To become oneself in love is the ultimate aim."
 
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