“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. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple ‘I must,’ then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet
Tag: Rilke
let go
“…Fling the emptiness in your arms
out into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds
will feel the increase of air with more passionate flight.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke, First Elegy, Duino Elegies
the change
” I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.
Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that’s wide and timeless.
So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a grave site
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:
a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
note: from The Book Hours by Rainer Maria Rilke
like a river
“May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing it and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
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