Letters about living, R. M. Rilke

The Rilke Song - Juliana Hall ( ft. Carolyn Hove)

Tr. Spa-Eng. from a review by Martin Lucas

 The volume brings together about twenty letters that the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to his wife, several friends and some lovers between 1901 and 1923 which release some clues on the notions this author cherished about love, death, religion, and so on.
 For Rilke, solitude is sacred in human nature and in his own, to the extent that he considers the lover as "guardian of the solitude" of the loved one. "I implore those who love me to love my solitude", he says. In this way he also means marriage. For him, love is a extremely difficult way of understanding, only possible between mature people and of great richness: "Only two unique worlds, wide and deep can join".
 For Rilke, death must be considered one of the great events of existence and he even states that life must be devoted to learning how to die in a dignified manner, "well done", "in which chance has no place", and even "enthusiastic." Rilke criticizes religions that seek to establish themselves as a palliative to the prospect of death and is in favor of a religious conception rather special, the most individualistic and subjective. For example, he writes:

        "Oh, how far I am of those misers who pray before asking if God exists! 
        If not, or does not exist yet, what! My prayer will create it because, as 
        released to the heavens it is fully created".

 Baptized in the Catholic rite, Rilke refers, in the last letter of this volume, the closest to his death, to his estrangement from the Christian philosophy:

         "The Christian experience is progressively moving away from me; 
         the primitive God weighs infinitely more. The idea of being a sinner, 
         who cannot reach God without ransom, is increasingly repugnant 
         to a heart that has comprehended the earth"

 A book that, shared or not the ideological concepts that guide it, you cannot read without stopping at every moment to highlight original and brilliant phrases.