R. M. Rilke: Letter
to a young poet
From:
R. M. Rilke, Letters to a young poet,
tr. by Stephen Mitchell
Page 3
Mental creation too arises from the
physical, is of one nature with it and only like a softer, more enraptured and
more eternal repetition of bodily delight. "The thought of being a creator,
of engendering, of shaping" is nothing without the continuous great
confirmation and embodiment in the world, nothing without the thousandfold
assent from Things and animals - and our enjoyment of it is so indescribably
beautiful and rich only because it is full of inherited memories of the
engendering and birthing of millions. In one creative thought a thousand
forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and
exaltation. And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in
rocking delight perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth, and strength
for the song of some future poets, who will appear in order to say ecstasies
that are unsayable. And they call forth the future; and even if they have made a
mistake and embrace blindly, the future comes anyway, a new human being arises,
and on the foundation of the accident that seems to be accomplished here, there
awakens the law by which a strong, determined seed forces its way through to the
egg cell that openly advances to meet it. Don't be confused by surfaces; in the
depths everything becomes law. And those who live the mystery falsely and badly
(and they are very many) lose it only for themselves and nevertheless pass it on
like a sealed letter, without knowing it. And don't be puzzled by how many names
there are and how complex each life seems. Perhaps above them all there is a
great motherhood, in the form of a communal yearning. The beauty of the girl, a
being who (as you so beautifully say) "has not yet achieved anything,"
is motherhood that has a presentiment of itself and begins to prepare, becomes
anxious, yearns. And the mother's beauty is motherhood that serves, and in the
old woman there is a great remembering. And in the man too there is motherhood,
it seems to me, physical and mental; his engendering is also a kind of birthing,
and it is birthing when he creates out of his innermost fullness. And perhaps
the sexes are more akin than people think, and the great renewal of the world
will perhaps consist in one phenomenon: that man and woman, freed from all
mistaken feelings and aversions, will seek each other not as opposites but as
brother and sister, as neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to
bear in common, simply, earnestly, and patiently, the heavy sex that has been
laid upon them. ...
Rilke wrote his first letter to a young poet (the original
title is "Briefe an einen jungen Dichter") in the February
of 1903 and the last one in the December of 1908. He had already
written the "Book of Images". Read
more... Cf. Plato, Books
can be your worst enemies *
Jaspers, Truth is in
communication *
Kierkegaard, My work as an author
*
Emerson, Reading and writing as
self-knowledge *
Francis Bacon, Reading & writing as
moral activities *
Tom Schulman, Dead Poets
Society
*
Gibson - MacRury, The man without a face
*
J. M. Lefévre, The White Thinking
*
Dostoevsky, The dream of ridiculous
man
