Look at the sky. Is there no constellation called Rider?
For the image is imprinted on the mind:
this arrogance made from Earth and a second one astride,
driving him and holding him back.

Hunted, then harnessed: isn’t this
the sinewy nature of our being?
Path and turning, a touch to guide.
New distances. And the two are one.

But are they? Or is it only the going
that unites them? When they stop
they belong again to table or pasture.

The starry patterns fool us, too. Still,
it pleases us for a moment
to believe in them. That is all we need.

— Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus I, 11

I do not know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelops us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler’s helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego.

— Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

Who can say what is? Who is able to judge the true worth of things?

I can only measure the world in terms of longing. All things are so ready to accommodate our many and often mistaken thoughts and wishes. With each thing I would like to rest for a night, after a day of “doing” with other things. I would like to sleep once with each thing, nestled in its warmth; to dream in the rhythm of its breathing, its dear, naked neighborliness against my limbs, and grow strong in the fragrance of its sleep. Then, early in the morning, before it awakens, before any good-byes, to move on, to move on. . . .

— Rilke, Early Journals

Technically speaking, the narrator’s art of integrating telephone conversations still lags far behind that of rendering dialogues conducted from room to room, or from window to window across some narrow blue alley in an ancient town with water so precious, and the misery of donkeys, and rugs for sale, and minarets, and foreigners and melons, and the vibrant morning echoes.

— Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

Sexual pleasure is no different from the sensory experience of pure looking or the feel on the tongue of a luscious fruit; it is a wondrous knowing of the world, given to us so that we may learn its fullness and radiance. The problem is not our acceptance of it; the problem is that this experience is so often misused and squandered. It is taken to enliven the deadened places of our lives, to distract instead of heightening our awareness.

People have even made eating into something it is not meant to be. Experienced as automatic impulse on the one hand, or as excess on the other, the nature of this physical necessity is distorted, and similarly distorted are all the other simple requirements for the renewing of life.

— Rilke, Worpswede, July 16, 1903
Letters to a Young Poet

This is the animal that never was.
They didn’t know, and loved him anyway:
his bearing, his neck, the way he moved,
the light in his quiet eyes.

True, he didn’t exist. But because they loved him
he became a real animal. They made a space for him.
And in that clear, uncluttered space, he lifted his head
and hardly needed to exist.

They fed him: not with grain, but ever
with the chance that he could be.
And that so strengthened him

that, from within, he grew a horn.
All white, he drew near to a virgin and found himself
in a silver mirror and in her.

— Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 4

But you, divine poet, to the end a singer:
falling prey to the pack of Maenads,
you wove their shrieking into wider harmonies,
and brought from that destruction a song to build with.

No one to call when they raged and wrestled,
but the jagged stones they hurled
turned gentle when reaching you,
as if able to hear you.

Hounded by hatred, you were torn to pieces
while your music still rang amidst rocks and lions,
trees and birds. There you are singing still.

O dear lost god, you endless path!
Only because you were broken and scattered
have we become the ears of nature, and her voice.

— Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus I, 26

What change could our friend discern in her? What change could there be, good God! There she was. She always felt hot and buoyant, no matter the cold, and now her sealskin coat was wide open on her frilled blouse as she hugged Pnin’s head and he felt the grapefruit fragrance of her neck, and kept muttering: “Nu, nu, vot i horosho, nu vot” — mere verbal heart props — and she cried out: “Oh, he has splendid new teeth!” He helped her into a taxi, her bright diaphanous scarf caught on something, and Pnin slipped on the pavement, and the taximan said “Easy,” and took her bag from him, and everything had happened before, in this exact sequence.

— Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

See the flowers, so faithful to Earth.
We know their fate because we share it.
Were they to grieve for their wilting,
that grief would be ours to feel.

There’s a lightness in things. Only we move forever burdened,
pressing ourselves into everything, obsessed by weight.
How strange and devouring our ways must seem
to those for whom life is enough.

If you could enter their dreaming and dream with them deeply,
you would come back different to a different day,
moving so easily from that common depth.

Or maybe just stay there: they would bloom and welcome you,
all those brothers and sisters tossing in the meadows,
and you would be one of them.

— Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 14

Fear no more the heat o’ the Sun,
Nor the furious Winter’s rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.
Golden Lads, and Girls all must,
As Chimney-Sweepers come to dust.

— Shakespeare, Cymbeline

And this above all: that through these petals
light must pass. From a thousand skies,
each drop of darkness is filtered out
and the glow at the core of each flower
grows stronger and rises into life.

And the movement of the roses
has a vibrancy none could discern,
were it not for what it ignites
in the universe entire . . .

One could say they were self-contained
if self-contained meant
to transform the world outside,
patience of springtime, guilt and restlessness,
the secrecy of fate and the darkness of Earth at evening —
on out to the streaming and fleeing of clouds
and, farther yet, the orders of the stars —
take it all and turn it into
a handful of inwardness.

See how it lies at ease in these open roses.

— Rilke, New Poems

Soundless existence ever opening,
filling space while taking it from no one,
diminishing nothing, defined by nothing outside itself,
all coming from within, clothed in softness
and radiant in its own light, even to its outermost edge.
When have we known a thing like this,

like the tender and delicate way
that rose petal touches rose petal?
Or like this: that each petal is an eyelid,
and under it lie other eyelids
closed, as if letting all vision be cradled
in deepening sleep.

— Rilke, New Poems

You have seen explosions of anger, seen how two boys
wrestle themselves into a single knot of hatred,
writhing on the ground like an animal assailed
by a swarm of bees. You have seen actors portray
paroxysms of rage, and maddened horses
beyond control, eyes rolling out of their heads,
teeth bared as if their very skull were shaking loose.

But now you know how things are forgotten.
For here before you stands a bowl of roses:
unforgettable, complete in itself,
a fullness of being:
self offering without surrender, sheer presence
becoming what we truly are.

— Rilke, New Poems

Just as the watchman in the vineyards
has a hut, keeps vigil there,
I am that hut, Lord.
And I am night, Lord, within your night.

Wine garden, meadow, apple orchard,
field that no springtime forgets,
fig tree that yields a thousand figs
though rooted in ground as hard as marble:

fragrance exudes from your rounding branches.
You never ask if I am keeping watch.
Fearless, dissolved in juices,
your depths rise quietly around me.

— Rilke, The Book of Hours I, 58

Earth, isn’t this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?
Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly
there’s nothing left outside us to see?
What, if not transformation,
is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love,
I want it too. Believe me,
no more of your springtimes are needed
to win me over — even one flower
is more than enough. Before I was named
I belonged to you. I see no other law
but yours, and know I can trust
the death you will bring.

See, I live. On what?
Childhood and future are equally present.
Sheer abundance of being
floods my heart.

— Rilke, From the Ninth Duino Elegy