“Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.”
Rainer Maria Rilke's comparison of love to the measles may initially seem strange, but upon closer examination, it reveals a deeper truth about the intensity of love as one grows older. Just as the measles can be more severe in adults, Rilke suggests that love can also become more intense and consuming with age. This metaphor highlights the idea that the emotions and experiences of love can have a profound impact on individuals as they mature, influencing their thoughts, actions, and overall well-being. It implies that love can be both exhilarating and overwhelming, especially as one gains more life experience and perspective.
“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
“Don't ask for any advice from them and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
“Avoid providing material for the drama that is always stretched tight between parents and children; it uses up much of the children’s strength and wastes the love of the elders, which acts and warms even if it doesn’t comprehend. Don’t ask for advice from them and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is strength and blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
“But not you, O girl, nor yet his mother,stretched his eyebrows so fierce with expectation.Not for your mouth, you who hold him now,did his lips ripen into these fervent contours.Do you really think your quiet footstepscould have so convulsed him, you who move like dawn wind?True, you startled his heart; but older terrorsrushed into him with that first jolt to his emotions.Call him . . . you'll never quite retrieve him from those dark consorts.Yes, he wants to, he escapes; relieved, he makes a homein your familiar heart, takes root there and begins himself anew.But did he ever begin himself?”
“ERANNA TO SAPPHOO You wild adept at throwing!Like a spear by other things, I'd lainthere beside my next of kin. Your strainflung me far. To where's beyond my knowing.None can bring me back again.Sisters think upon me as they twine,and the house is full of warm relation.I alone am out of the design,and I tremble like a supplication;for the lovely goddess all creationbowers in legend lives this life of mine.SAPPHO TO ERANNAWith unrest I want to inundate you,want to brandish you, you vine-wreathed stave.Want, like death itself, to penetrate youand to pass you onwards like the graveto the All: to all these things that wait you.”
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”