Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke—better known as Rainer Maria Rilke—was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke's work as inherently "mystical". His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief,...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth4 December 1875
CountryGermany
When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everthing in me that is bewildered and confused.
Deeply I go down into myself. My god is Dark and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.
You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything the darkness that comes with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up. So many live on and want nothing And are raised to the rank of prince By the slippery ease of their light judgments But what you love to see are faces that do work and feel thirst. You love most of all those who need you as they need a crowbar or a hoe. You have not grown old, and it is not too late To dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret.
Fame is finally only the sum total of all the misunderstanding that can gather around a new name.
Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help.
All things want to float.
Where I create, there I am true.
If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself, Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth.
What we call fate does not come into us from the outside, but emerges from us.
Understand, I'll slip quietly away from the noisy crowd when I see the pale stars rising, blooming, over the oaks. I'll pursue solitary pathways through the pale twilit meadows with only this one dream: You come too.
It is true that these mysteries are dreadful, and people have always drawn away from them. But where can we find anything sweet and glorious that would never wear this mask, the mask of the dreadful? Whoever does not, sometimes or other, give his full consent, his full and joyous consent to the dreadfulness of life, can never take possession of the unutterable abundance and power of our existence; can only walk on its edge, and one day, when the judgment is given, will have been neither alive nor dead.
Resolve to be always beginning-to be a beginner!
Bound by conventions, people tend to reach for what is easy. Here we must be unafraid of what is difficult. For all living beings in nature must unfold in their particular way and become themselves despite all opposition.
If only it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, and even a little beyond the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust than we have in our joys.