xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“First a childhood, limitless and without
renunciation or goals. O unselfconscious joy.
Then suddenly terror, barriers, schools, drudgery,
and collapse into temptation and loss.Defiance. The one bent becomes the bender,
and thrusts upon others that which it suffered.
Loved, feared, rescuer, fighter, winner
and conqueror, blow by blow.And then alone in cold, light, open space,
yet still deep within the mature erected form,
a gasping for the clear air of the first one, the old one…Then God leaps out from behind his hiding place.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Erst eine Kindheit, grenzenlos und ohne
Verzicht und Ziel. O unbewußte Lust.
Auf einmal Schrecken, Schranke, Schule, Frohne
und Absturtz in Versuchung und Verlust.Trotz. Der Gebogene wird selber Bieger
und rächt an anderen, daß er erlag.
Geliebt, gefürchtet, Retter, Ringer, Sieger
und Überwinder, Schlag auf Schlag.Und dann allein im Weiten, Leichten, Kalten.
Doch tief in der errichteten Gestalt
ein Atemholen nach dem Ersten, Alten...Da stürzte Gott aus seinem Hinterhalt.
As translated by Cliff Crego
Imaginärer Lebenslauf (Imaginary Life Journey) (September 13, 1923)

“There is probably no point in my going into your questions now; for what I could say about your tendency to doubt or about your inability to bring your outer and inner lives into harmony or about all the other thing that oppress you - : is just what I have already said: just the wish that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith; that you may gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Nine (4 November 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“Already my gaze is upon the hill, the sunny one,
at the end of the path which I've only just begun.
So we are grasped, by that which we could not grasp,
at such great distance, so fully manifest—and it changes us, even when we do not reach it,
into something that, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a sign appears, echoing our own sign…
But what we sense is the falling winds.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Schon ist mein Blick am Hügel, dem besonnten,
dem Wege, den ich kaum begann, voran.
So fasst uns das, was wir nicht fassen konnten,
voller Erscheinung, aus der Ferne an—und wandelt uns, auch wenn wirs nicht erreichen,
in jenes, das wir, kaum es ahnend, sind;
ein Zeichen weht, erwidernd unserm Zeichen...
Wir aber spüren nur den Gegenwind.
Spaziergang (A Walk) (March 1924)
Alternate translation:
My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance—and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave . . .
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.
Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke as translated by Robert Bly (1981)

“Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Four (16 July 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“Irony: Do not let yourself be governed by it, especially not in unproductive moments. In productive ones try to make use of it as one more means of seizing life.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Two (5 April 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Worpswede (1903)

“The next tide will erase the way through the mudflats,
and everything will be again equal on all sides;
but the small, far-out island already has its
eyes closed; bewildered, the dike draws a circlearound its inhabitants who were born
into a sleep in which many worlds
are silently confused, for they rarely speak,
and every phrase is like an epitaph.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book New Poems

Die nächste Flut verwischt den Weg im Watt,
und alles wird auf allen Seiten gleich;
die kleine Insel draußen aber hat
die Augen zu; verwirrend kreist der Deichum ihre Wohner, die in einem Schlaf
geboren werden, drin sie viele Welten
verwechseln schweigend, denn sie reden selten,
und jeder Satz ist wie ein Epitaph
Die Insel I (The Island I) (as translated by Cliff Crego)
Neue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907)

“Painting is something that takes place among the colors, and … one has to leave them alone completely, so that they can settle the matter among themselves. Their intercourse: this is the whole of painting. Whoever meddles, arranges, injects his human deliberation, his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already disturbing and clouding their activity.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 21, 1907)
Rilke's Letters

“In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us:
they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys, and as gently as children
outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we, who do need
such great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often
the source of our spirit's growth — : could we exist without them?”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

Schließlich brauchen sie uns nicht mehr, die Früheentrückten,
man entwöhnt sich des Irdischen sanft, wie man den Brüsten
milde der Mutter entwächst. Aber wir, die so große
Geheimnisse brauchen, denen aus Trauer so oft
seliger Fortschritt entspringt –: könnten wir sein ohne sie?
First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Duino Elegies (1922)

“Lovers … when you raise yourselves and press
your mouths together—drink upon drink:
strange how each of you drinks your way past the other.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

Liebende … [w]enn ihr einer dem andern
euch an den Mund hebt und ansetzt –: Getränk an Getränk:
o wie entgeht dann der Trinkende seltsam der Handlung.
Second Elegy (as translated by Lee Siegel)
Duino Elegies (1922)

“You must change your life.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“Someday you will name me,
then gently place those burning
holy roses in my hair.

[Songs of Longing]”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Rainer Maria Rilke - Sämtliche Werke (Complete Works)

“A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“And I circle ten thousand years long; And I still don't know if I'm a falcon, a storm, or an unfinished song.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Nine (4 November 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Context: All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn't intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom.

“We make our way through Everything like thread passing through fabric, giving shape to images that we ourselves do not know.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“I am a house gutted by fire where only the guilty sometimes sleep before the punishment that devours them hounds them out in the open.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“Your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes, far in the distance.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“Who speaks of victory? To endure is all.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer