the single, wholly mutual core

Happy are those who know
behind all words, the Unsayable stands,
and from that source, the Infinite
crosses over to gladness, and us.

Free of those bridges we raise
with constructed distinctions;
so that always, in each separate joy,
we gaze at the single, wholly mutual core.





~ Rainer Maria Rilke
art by Megan Duncanson

the prodigal son

.

.

It would be difficult to persuade me that the story of the Prodigal Son is not the legend of a man who didn't want to be loved.. When he was a child, everyone in the house loved him.  He grew up not knowing it could be any other way and got used to their tenderness, when he was a child.

But as a boy he tried to lay aside these habits.  He wouldn't have been able to say it, but when he spent the whole day roaming around outside and didn't even want to have the dogs with him, it was because they too loved him; because in their eyes he could see observation and sympathy, expectation, concern; because in their presence too he couldn't do anything without giving pleasure or pain.  But what he wanted in those days was that profound indifference of heart which sometimes, early in the morning, in the field, seized him with such purity that he had to start running, in order to have no time or breath to be more than a weightless moment in which the morning becomes conscious of itself.

The secret of that life of his which had never yet come into being, spread out before him.  Involuntarily he left the footpath and went running across the fields, with outstretched arms, as if in this wide reach he would be able to master several directions at once.  And then he flung himself down behind some bush and didn't matter to anyone.  He peeled himself a willow flute, threw a pebble at some animal, he leaned over and forced a beetle to turnaround:  none of this became fate, and the sky passed over him as over nature.  Finally afternoon came with all its inspirations; you could become a buccaneer on the isle of Tortuga, and there was no obligation to be that; you could besiege Campeche, take Vera Cruz by storm; you could be a whole army or an officer on horseback or a ship on the ocean:  according to the way you felt.  If you thought of kneeling, right away you were Deodatus of Gozon and had slain the dragon and understood that this heroism was pure arrogance, without an obedient heart.  For you didn't spare yourself anything that belonged to the game.  But no matter how many scenes arose in your imagination, in between them there was always enough time to be nothing but a bird, you didn't even know what kind.  Though afterward, you had to go home.

...


Once you walked in to its full smell, most matters were already decided.  A few details might still be changed; but on the whole you were already the person they thought you were; the person for whom they had long ago fashioned a life, out of his small past and their own desires; the creature belonging to them all, who stood day and night under the influence of their love, between their hope and their mistrust, before their approval or their blame.


It is useless for such a person to walk up the front steps with infinite caution.  They will all be in the living room, and as soon as the door opens they will all look his way.  He remains in the dark, wants to wait for their questions.  But then comes the worst.  They take him by the hands, lead him over to the table, and all of them, as many as are there, gather inquisitively in front of the lamp.  They have the best of it; they stay in the shadows, and on him alone falls, along with the light, all the shame of having a face.

Can he stay and conform to this lying life of approximations which they have assigned to him, and come to resemble them all in every feature of his face?  Can he divide himself between the delicate truthfulness of his will and the coarse deceit which corrupts it in his own eyes?  Can he give up becoming what might hurt those of his family who have nothing left but a weak heart?


No, he will go away.  For example, while they are all busy setting out on his birthday table those badly guessed presents which, once again, are supposed to make up for everything.  He will go away for ever.  Not until long afterward would he realize how thoroughly he had decided never to love, in order not to put anyone in the terrible position of being loved.  He remembered this years later and, like other good intentions, it too had proved impossible.  For he had loved again and again in his solitude, each time squandering his whole nature and in unspeakable fear for the freedom of the other person.  Slowly he learned to let the rays of his emotion shine through into the beloved object, instead of consuming the emotion in her.  And he was pampered by the joy of recognizing, through the more and more transparent form of the beloved, the expanses that she opened to his infinite desire for possession.





~ Rainer Maria Rilke
excerpt from The Prodigal Son
from the Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
art by andy warhol

silent friend of many distances

Silent friend of many distances, feel
how your breath enlarges all of space.
Let your presence ring out like a bell
into the night. What feeds upon your face

grows mighty from the nourishment thus offered.
Move through transformation, out and in.
What is the deepest loss that you have suffered?
If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.

In this immeasurable darkness, be the power
that rounds your sense in their magic ring,
the sense of their mysterious encounter.

And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.





~ Rainer Maria Rilke
The Sonnets to Orpheus, II, 29
(Translation by Steven Mitchell)
art by Teresa Evangeline

pour yourself out like a fountain

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame

where everything shines as it disappears.

The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much

as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.

Is it safer to be gray and numb?

What turns hard becomes rigid

and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.

Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking

finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation

it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,

dares you to become the wind.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
The Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII

I am, you anxious one

I am, you anxious one.

Don't you sense me, ready to break

into being at your touch?

My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.

Can't you see me standing before you

cloaked in stillness?

Hasn't my longing ripened in you

from the beginning

as fruit ripens on a branch?

I am the dream you are dreaming.

When you want to awaken, I am that wanting:

I grow strong in the beauty you behold.

And with the silence of stars I enfold

your cities made by time.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

art by Luca Longobardi

vast inner solitude

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.

You should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it. This very wish, if you use it calmly and prudently and like a tool, will help you spread out your solitude over a great distance.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from his Letters To A Young Poet

(Dove that ventured outside)

.

Dove that ventured outside,     flying far from the dovecote:

housed and protected again,     one with the day, the night,

knows what serenity is,     for she has felt her wings

pass through all distance and fear     in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home,     never exposed to loss,

innocent and secure,     cannot know tenderness;

only the won-back heart      can ever be satisfied: free,

through all is has given up,     to rejoice in its mastery.

Being arches itself     over the vast abyss.

Ah the ball that we dared,     that we hurled into infinite space,

doesn't it fill our hands     differently with its return:

heavier by the weight     of where it has been.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Stephen Mitchell

from: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

to leave even one's own first name behind

Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,

to give up customs one barely had time to learn, 

not to see roses and other promising Things

in terms of a human future; no longer to be

what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to leave

even one's own first name behind, forgetting it

as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.

Strange to no longer desire one's desires.  Strange 

to see meanings that clung together once, floating away

in every direction.  And being dead is hard work

and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel

a trace of eternity. - Though the living are wrong to believe

in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created.

Angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living 

they are moving among, or the dead.  The eternal torrent

whirls all ages along in it, through both realms

forever, and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Duino Elegies, The first Elegy

translation by Stephen Mitchell

art by Matisse

love the difficult

What is required of us in that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it.

In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.

Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams:

there against the depth of this background, they stand out,

there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

there is this mystery

.

And yet, though we strain

against the deadening grip

of daily necessity,

I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it, then?

Is it the things themselves,

or something waiting inside them,

like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?

Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers

interweaving their fragrances,

or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it the animals, warmly moving,

or the birds, that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it, then?  God, are you the one

who is living life?

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Pilgrimage, II,12

you who let yourselves feel

You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing

that is more than your own.

Let it brush your cheeks

as it divides and rejoins behind you.

Blessed ones, whole ones,

you where the heart begins:

You are the bow that shoots the arrows

and you are the target.

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back

into the earth;

for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown

too heavy. You cannot bring them along.

Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, IV

translation by Joanna Macy

letting each other go

For this is wrong, if anything is wrong:

not to enlarge the freedom of love

with all the inner freedom one can summon.

We need, in love, to practice only this:

letting each other go.  For holding on

comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

you are the poor one

You are the poor one, you the destitute.

You are the stone that has no resting place.

You are the diseased one

whom we fear to touch.

Only the wind is yours.

You are poor like the spring rain

that gently caresses the city;

like wishes muttered in a prison cell, without a world to hold them;

and like the invalid, turning in his bed to ease the pain.

Like flowers along the track, shuddering

as the train roars by, and like the hand

that covers our face when we cry - that poor.

Yours is the suffering of birds on freezing nights,

of dogs who go hungry for days.

Yours the long sad waiting of animals

who are locked up and forgotten.

You are the beggar who averts his face,

the homeless person who has given up asking;

you howl in the storm.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Poverty and Death, III,18

photo by Fran Khorvat

seeing "the deep world"

Leonid Afremov

There is a portion of reality which is offered to us without our making any special effort beyond opening our eyes and ears, and this we call the world of pure impressions.  But there is another world built of structures of impressions, which, though hidden, is none the less real.  If this other world is to exist for us, we need to open something more than our physical eyes, and to undertake a greater kind of effort.  But the measure of our effort neither confers any reality on that world, nor takes it away.  The deep world is as clear as the surface one, only it asks more of us.

~ Jose Ortega y Gasset

from Meditations of Quixote, 1914

adapted from a translation by J.W. Jeaffreson

Picasso

These Things whose essential life you want to express first ask you, "Are you free? Are you prepared to devote all your love to me...?"  And if the Thing sees that you are otherwise occupied with even a particle of your interest, it shuts itself off; it may perhaps give you some slight sign of friendship, a word or a nod, but it will never give you its heart, entrust you with its patient being, its sweet sidereal constancy, which makes it so like the constellations in the sky.  In order for a Thing to speak to you, you must regard it for a certain time as the only one that exists, as the one and only phenomenon which, through your laborious and exclusive love, is now placed at the center of the universe, and which, in that incomparable place, is on that day attended by angels.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from a letter sent to Baladine Klossowska

translation by Stephen Mitchell

both excerpts found in the essay Poetry and the Mind of Indirection

by Jane Hirshfield

though we strain

And yet, though we strain

against the deadening grip

of daily necessity,

I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it then?

Is it the things themselves,

or something waiting inside them,

like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?

Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers

interweaving their fragrances

or streets, as they wind through time?

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

(from: Book of Hours, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

unlived

.

No one lives his life.

Disguised since childhood,

haphazardly assembled

from voices and fears and little pleasures,

we come of age as masks.

Our true face never speaks.

Somewhere there must be storehouses

where all these lives are laid away

like suits of armor or old carriages

or clothes hanging limply on the walls.

Maybe all paths lead there,

to the repository of unlived things.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

art by picasso

we say

We say release, and radiance, and roses,

and echo upon everything that's known;

and yet, behind the world our names enclose is

the nameless: our true archetype and home.

The sun seems male, and earth is like a woman,

the field is humble, and the forest proud;

but over everything we say, inhuman,

moves the forever-undetermined god.

We grow up; but the world remains a child.

Star and flower, in silence, watch us go.

And sometimes we appear to be the final

exam they must succeed on. And they do.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Stephen Mitchell

photo by Carsten Meyerdierks

be the mystery

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

Let this darkness be a bell tower

and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.

What is it like, such intensity of pain?

If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,

say to the silent earth: I flow.

To the rushing water, speak: I am.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Sonnets of Orpheus II, 29

translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

to Holderlin

We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most

intimate.  From images that are full, the spirit

plunges on to others that suddenly must be filled;

there are no lakes till eternity.  Here,

falling is best.  To fall from the mastered emotion 

into the guessed-at, and onward.

To you, O majestic poet, to you the compelling image,

O caster of spells, was a life, entire;  when you uttered it

a line snapped shut like fate,  there was a death

even in the mildest, and you walked straight into it; but

the god who preceded you led you out and beyond it.

O wandering spirit, most wandering of all!  How snugly

the others live in their heated poems and stay,

content, in their narrow smiles.  Taking part.  Only you 

move like the moon.  And underneath brightens and darkens

the nocturnal landscape, the holy, the terrified landscape,

which you feel in departures.  No one

gave it away more sublimely, gave it back

more fully to the universe, without any need to hold on.

Thus for years that you no longer counted, holy, you played

with infinite joy, as though it were not inside you,

but lay, belonging to no one, all around

on the gentle lawns of the earth, where the godlike children had left it.

Ah, what the greatest have longed for: you built it, free of desire,

stone upon stone, till it stood.  And when it collapsed,

even then you weren't bewildered.

Why, after such an eternal life, do we still

mistrust the earthly?  Instead of patiently learning from transience

the emotions for what future

slopes of the heart, in pure space?

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Uncollected Poems

translated by Stephen Mitchell

ripen

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

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps 

the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, 

the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which

 all other work is merely preparation. 

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. 

But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, 

for a long time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened 

and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. 

Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person 

(for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?),

 it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, 

to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; 

it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him 

and calls him to vast distances. 

Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves 

("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people 

use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and 

every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, 

for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, 

is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Letter to a Young Poet, #7

art by picasso