Rainer Maria Rilke citations

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

Lettres à un jeune poète de Rainer Maria Rilke

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

Notes sur la mélodie des choses

Lettres à un jeune poète de Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

Lettres à un jeune poète de Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet

Letters to a Young Poet

Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Letter One (17 February 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Contexte: No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Three (23 April 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Source: Duino Elegies (1922)
Contexte: Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them
pressed me against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

You Who Never Arrived, as translated by Stephen Mitchell
Contexte: You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house —, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,—
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Contexte: People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Sonnet 6 (as translated by Edward Snow)
Sonnets to Orpheus (1922)

Source: Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Variante: For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.
Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
Contexte: People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

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

Wendung (Turning Point), as translated by Stephen Mitchell

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

As quoted in Sunbeams : A Book of Quotations (1990) by Sy Safransky, p. 42

Source: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge