So,
Dear Mr. Kappus (the young poet, p01)
You shouldn’t be dismayed if a sadness rises up in front of you, greater than any you have seen before; or if a disquiet plays over your hands () like light and cloud-shadow. ()
Think that something is happening with you,
That life has not forgotten you,
That it holds you in its hand;
It will not let you fall.
Why should you want to exclude from your life all unsettling () when you don’t know what work it is these states are performing within you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question where it all comes from and where it is leading? You well know you are in a
Period of transition ()
If there is something ailing in the way you go about things, then remember that sickness is the means by whih an organism rids itself of something foreign to it. All one has to do is help it to be ill, to have its whole illness and let it break out, for that is how it mends itself. ()
There is so much () going on ()
You must be patient as an invalid and
Trusting as a convalescent,
For you are perhaps both.
And more than that:
You are also the doctor ()
But with all illnesses there are many days when the doctor can do nothing but wait,
Inasfar as you are your own doctor
This above all is
What you
Must
Do
Now.
Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 –1926)
Borgeby, gard, Fladie, Sweden, 12. August, 1904
Excerpts
5/6, p01
#poem #poetry #individuality #authenticity #sovereignty #tolerance #reconciliation #letterlab #source #zero #writing #letterportals #wordpuzzles #programming #perception #encryption #code #polarity #one #unity #binity #trinity #quadrinity #singularity #duality #ternity #quaternity #p01 #fediverse #exquisitesocial