Quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke

Memory Is Not Enough Memory is not enough… I do not recollect. What I am is alive in me because of you. I do not reinvent you at sadly cooled-off places you have left behind. Even your absence is filled with your warmth and is more real than your not-existing. Longing often meanders into vagueness. Why should I throw myself away when something in you may be touching me, very lightly, like moonlight on a window seat.

O espaço, fora de nós, ganha e traduz as coisas: Se quiseres conquistar a existência de uma árvore, Reveste-a de espaço interno, esse espaço Que tem seu ser em ti. Cerca-a de coações. Ela não tem limite, e só se torna realmente uma árvore Quando se ordena no seio da tua renúncia.

The sunken are always seeking earth again

Was bin ich unter diese Unendlichkeit gelegt, duftend wie eine Wiese, hin und her bewegt, rufend zugleich und bange, daß einer den Ruf vernimmt, und zum Untergange in einem Andern bestimmt.

try to have love for the questions themselves, like locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Do not seek out the answers now, which cannot be given to you because it you cannot live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then, without noticing it, you will gradually come, on some far-off day, to live your way into the answer.

No hay nada menos apropiado para aproximarse a una obra de arte que las palabras de la crítica: de ellas se derivan siempre malentendidos más o menos desafortunados.

One ought to turn the most extreme possibility inside oneself into the measure for one's life, for our life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry.

perhaps the sexes are more closely related than we think, and the great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in man and woman, freed of all sense of error and disappointment, seeking one another out not as opposites but as brothers and sisters and neighbours, and they will join together as human beings, to share the heavy weight of sexuality that is laid upon them with simplicity, gravity and patience.

deje que la vida le ocurra. Créame: la vida está en lo correcto, siempre.

Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself.

Finally - we know this - life's little wisdom is to wait (but to wait in the proper, pure state of mind), and the great grace that is bestowed on us in return is to survive. (Letters on Life)

Wie einer, der auf fremden Meeren fuhr, so bin ich bei den ewig Einheimischen; die vollen Tage stehn auf ihren Tischen, mir aber ist die Ferne voll Figur. In mein Gesicht reicht eine Welt herein, die vielleicht unbewohnt ist wie ein Mond, sie aber lassen kein Gefühl allein, und alle ihre Worte sind bewohnt. Die Dinge, die ich weither mit mir nahm, sehn selten aus, gehalten an das Ihre -: in ihrer großen Heimat sind sie Tiere, hier halten sie den Atem an vor Scham.

For our life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry.

Only the solitary individual is subject, like a thing, to the fundamental laws, and if someone goes out into the morning as it is breaking, or looks out into the evening full of occurence, and if he feels what is happening there, every hint of station slips from him as if from a dead man, although he is standing in the midst of life itself.

Do not search for the answers, which cannot be given you, because you could not live them. That is the point, to live everything, Now you must live your problems. And perhaps gradually, without noticing it, you will live your way into the answer some distant day.

As coisas em geral não são tão fáceis de apreender e dizer como normalmente nos querem levar a acreditar; a maioria dos acontecimentos é indizível, realiza-se em um espaço que nunca uma palavra penetrou, e mais indizíveis do que todos os acontecimentos são as obras de arte, existências misteriosas, cuja vida perdura ao lado da nossa, que passa.

And this is why it is so important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future sets foot in us is so much closer to life than that other noisy and fortuitous point of time at which it happens to us as if from outside.

A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgment of it: there is no other.

Para terminar querría aconsejaros ir creciendo de manera tranquila y sincera siguiendo vuestra propia evolución; la manera más probable de dificultar vuestra evolución es mirar al exterior y esperar del exterior repuestas a preguntas que tal vez solo pueda responder vuestro más íntimo sentimiento en su momento de mayor silencio.

After all, this is one of the most difficult tests for the true artist: he must always remain innocently unaware of his own virtues if he does not wish to rob them of their spontaneity and their unaffectedness.

No one can advise and assist you, no one. There is only one way: go into yourself. Seek out the reason that commands you to write; discover if it has stretched out its roots into the deepest part of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would have to die if it were forbidden you to write.

You must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like someone who is recovering; for perhaps you are both.

Seldom have you smiled so tenderly, mothers. How could he help loving what smiled at him. Before you he loved it, since, while you carried him, it was dissolved in the waters, that render the embryo light.

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.