Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated from German

Book: Letters to a Young Poet

“After all, people have turned eating into something other: on the one hand need, on the other an abundance that has dimmed the sharpness of that need, while all the deep and simple necessities whereby life is renewed have likewise been rendered dim. Yet individuals can, of themselves, clarify, and live clearly (if not the dependent individual, then the solitary one at least). The individual can take pains to remember that all beauty in creatures and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and yearning, and can see the creature as he sees the plant, patiently and willingly, uniting and multiplying and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of physical pain, but bowing to necessities greater than pleasure or pain, and more powerful than willing or resisting. Oh, if only human beings could accept this mystery, with which the world is filled even it its smallest things, more humbly and suffer it more seriously, and endure, and feel how dreadfully heavy it is, instead of taking it lightly. If only they would show more reverence towards their fertility, which is essentially one whether mental or physical; since mental creation also arises from the physical, is of the one nature with it, and only like a quieter, more pleasing, eternal repetition of physical passion. ‘The thought of creating, engendering forming’ is nothing without its vast, endless confirmation and realisation in the world, nothing without the thousandfold endorsement of things and creatures – and it for this reason alone that our enjoyment is so indescribably rich and beautiful, because it is full of inherited memories from the engendering and birth of countless millions. In creative thought, a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life, filling it with depth and splendour. And those who come together in the night, entwined in cradling delight, perform a solemn task, and gather sweetness, depth and power for the song of some future poet, who will rise and utter unspeakable bliss. And they summon the future; and even if they err and embrace each other blindly, that future will come, a new being arrives, and on the basis of the seemingly chance encounter that has occurred that law awakens by which a resilient powerful seed forces its way through the egg’s membrane that opens to meet it. Don’t be deceived by surface; in the depths all becomes law. Yet those who live the mystery falsely and wrongly (and there are very many) lose it only for themselves, and still pass it on unknowingly like a sealed letter. And don’t be confused by the multitude of names and the complexity of forms. Perhaps above all a great maternal yearning exists in common.”

Illustration by Laurent Guidali

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