Rainer Maria Rilke

“C'est pourtant nous qui t'avons proposéde remplir ton calice.Enchantée de cet artifice,ton abondance l'avait osé.Tu étais assez riche, pour devenir cent fois toi-mêmeen une seule fleur;c'est l'état de celui qui aime ...Mais tu n'as pas pensé ailleurs.”

“Je te vois, rose, livre entrebâillé,qui contient tant de pagesde bonheur détailléqu'on ne lira jamais. Livre-mage,qui s'ouvre au vent et qui peut être lules yeux fermés ...,dont les papillons sortent confusd'avoir eu les mêmes idées.”

“La rose complèteJ’ai une telle conscience de tonêtre, rose complète,que mon consentement te confondavec mon cœur en fête.Je te respire comme si tu étais,rose, toute la vie,et je me sens l’ami parfaitd’une telle amie.”

“De ton rêve trop plein,fleur en dedans nombreuse,mouillée comme une pleureuse,tu te penches sur le matin.Tes douces forces qui dorment,dans un désir incertain,développent ces tendres formesentre joues et seins.”

“Contre qui, rose,avez-vous adoptéces épines?Votre joie trop finevous a-t-elle forcéede devenir cette chosearmée?Mais de qui vous protègecette arme exagérée?Combien d’ennemis vous ai-jeenlevésqui ne la craignaient point?Au contraire, d’été en automne,vous blessez les soinsqu’on vous donne.”

“En une seule fleurEnchantée de cet artifice,ton abondance l’avait osé.Tu étais assez riche, pour devenir centfois toi-même en une seule fleur;c’est l’état de celui qui aimeMais tu n’as pas pensé ailleurs.”

“Dirait-onAbandon entouré d'abandon,tendresse touchant aux tendresses ...C'est ton intérieur qui sans cessese caresse, dirait-on;se caresse en soi-même,par son propre reflet éclairé.Ainsi tu inventes le thèmedu Narcisse exaucé.”

“We only pass everything by like a transposition of air.”

“For the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indiferent place.”

“Mécontent de tous et mécontent de moi, je voudrais bien me racheter et m’enorguiellir un peu dans le silence et la solitude de la nuit. Âmes de ceux que j’ai aimés, âmes de ceux que j’ai chantés, fortifiez-moi, éloignez de moi le mensonge et les vapeurs corruptices du monde; et vous, Seigneur mon Dieu! accordez-moi la grâce de produire quelques beaux vers qui me prouvent à moi même que je ne suis pas le dernier des hommes, que je ne suis pas inférieur à ceux que je méprise.”

“I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough.”

“So many are alive who don’t seem to care. Casual, easy, they move in the world as though untouched. But you take pleasure in the faces of those who know they thirst. You cherish those who grip you for survival. You are not dead yet, it’s not too late to open your depths by plunging into them and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there.”

“You are the partner of her loneliness, the unspeaking center of her monologues. With each disclosure you encompass more and she stretches beyond what limits her, to hold you.”

“Who has not sat, afraid, before his heart's curtain?”

“that Rome (if one does not yet know it) has an oppressingly sad effect for the first few days: through the lifeless and doleful museum atmosphere it exhales, through the abundance of its pasts, fetched-forth and laboriously upheld pasts (on which a small present subsists), through the immense overestimation, sustained by savants and philologists and copied by the average traveler in Italy, of all these disfigured and dilapidated things, which at bottom are after all no more than chance remains of another time and of a life that is not and must not be ours. Finally, after weeks of being daily on the defensive, one finds oneself again, if still somewhat confused, and one says to oneself: no, there is not more beauty here than elsewhere, and all these objects, continuously admired by generations and patched and mended by workmen's hands, signify nothing, are nothing, and have no heart and no value; -- but there is much beauty here, because there is much beauty everywhere.”

“I think of you often, dear, and with such concentrated wishes that it really must help you in some way.”

“A world will come over you, the happiness, the wealth, the inconceivable greatness of a world.”

“Gefährlich und schlecht sind nur jene Traurigkeiten, die man unter die Leute trägt, um sie zu übertönen; wie Krankheiten, die oberflächlich und töricht behandelt werden, treten sie nur zurück und brechen nach einer kleinen Pause um so furchtbarer aus; und sammeln sich an im Innern und sind Leben, sind ungelebtes, verschmähtes, verlorenes Leben, an dem Man sterben kann.”

“There is time only to work slowlyThere is no time not to love”

“And when what is near you is far, then your distance is already among the stars and very large; rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before them and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with Your confidence or joy, which they could not understand.”

“El amor de un ser humano por otro, es posiblemente la prueba más difícil para cada uno de nosotros.”

“Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his conscious reflection, his progressive steps, mysterious even to himself, should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them in the moment of transition.”

“Ask no one to speak of you, not even contemptuously. And when time passes and you notice how your name is spreading around among people, don't take it more seriously than any of the other things you find on their lips. Think: your name has turned bad, and get rid of it. Take on another, any other, so that God can call you in the night. And conceal it from everyone.”

“We ignore the gods and fill our minds with trash.”

“A man taken out of his room and, almost without preparation or transition, placed on the heights of a great mountain range, would feel something like that: an unequalled insecurity, an abandonment to the nameless, would almost annihilate him. He would feel he was falling or think he was being catapulted out into space or exploded into a thousand pieces: what a colossal lie his brain would have to invent in order to catch up with and explain the situation of his senses.”

“That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love.”

“It is also good to love: because love is difficult.”

“What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours—that is what you must be able to attain.”

“But perhaps these are the very hours during which solitude grows; for its growing is painful as the growing of boys and sad as the beginning of spring.”

“And if what is near you is far away, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great; be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend.”

“Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

“You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.”

“In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!”

“How much there is to suffer. When was time enoughto pay attention to our lighter emotions?And still I recognize, better than most otherswho will be resurrected, what blessedness is.”

“winning does not tempt that man.This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,by constantly greater beings”

“Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too, just once. And never again. But to have been this once, completely, even if only once: to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.”

“Aufklärung heißt nichts anderes, als die Unschuld messen mit dem Maaße der Schuld!”

“How can I keep my soul in me, so thatit doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raiseit high enough, past you, to other things?I would like to shelter it, among remotelost objects, in some dark and silent placethat doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.Yet everything that touches us, me and you,takes us together like a violin’s bow,which draws one voice out of two separate strings.Upon what instrument are we two spanned?And what musician holds us in his hand?Oh sweetest song.- Love Song”

“At last, after weeks of daily fending off, you get your bearings back, and somewhat dazed you tell yourself: No, there is not more beauty here than elsewhere, and all these objects which generation after generation have continued to admire, which inexpert hands have mended and restored, they mean nothing, and are nothing and have no heart and no value; but there is a great deal of beauty here, because there is beauty everywhere.”

“Accetta dunque [...] un bacio con tutto il cuore nella solenne ora di Natale, la più pacata dell'anno, la più misteriosa, in cui i desideri ancora ignari si tendono fino all'estremo e vengono per prodigio esauditi: [...] abbandona ogni dubbio e incomprensione: in quest'ora abbiamo un posticino dentro di noi dove siamo semplicemente bambini, che attende e sta là, fiducioso e mai confuso, nel suo diritto a una grande gioia: questo è il Natale.”

“O trees of life, O when are you wintering?We are not unified. We have no instinctslike those of migratory birds. Useless, and late,we force ourselves, suddenly, onto the wind,and fall down to an indifferent lake.We realise flowering and fading together.And somewhere lions still roam. Never knowing,as long as they have their splendour, of any weakness.”

“Almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious.”

“If the confident animal coming toward ushad a mind like ours,the change in him would startle us.But to him his own being is endless,undefined, and without regardfor his condition: clear,like his eyes. Where we see future,he sees all, and himselfin all, made whole for always.”

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

“If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.”

“Often a starwas waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward youout of the distant path, or as you walkedunder an open window, a violinyielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.”

“Ama bugün bunca şey değişip dururken kendimizi değiştirmek, biz erkeklerin de görevi değil mi? Bir parça gelişmeyi, aşktaki çalışma payımızı zamanla ve yavaşça üzerimize almayı deneyemez miyiz? Aşkın bütün zahmetinden bizi azat ettiler ve böylece aşk, eğlencelerimiz arasına düştü; nasıl ki birçoğunun oyuncak dolabına bazen, iyi cinsten tentene parçası düşer, çocuğu sevindirir, sonra sevindirmez olur ve sonunda o kırık, o parça parça eşyalar arasında, bütün hepsinden daha kötü, kalakalır. Biz bütün amatörler gibi kolay hazlarla bozulduk ve usta diye geçiniyoruz. Başarılarımızı hor görsek, hep kendi hesabımıza başkalarına gördüğümüz aşk işini öğrenmeye ta başından başlasak nasıl olur? Madem bunca şey değişiyor, gitsek de bir yeni başlayan gibi başlasak?”

“I live my life in widening circleThat reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one,But I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower.I have been circling for thousands of years,And I still don't know: am I a falcon,A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]”

“Bodily delight is a sensory experience, not any different from pure looking or the pure feeling with which a beautiful fruit fills the tongue; it is a great, an infinite learning that is given to us, a knowledge of the world, the fullness and the splendor of all knowledge...the individual...can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and yearning, and he can see the animal, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly uniting and multiplying and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain, and more powerful than will and withstanding. If only human beings could more humbly receive this mystery---which the world is filled with...”

“Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.”