Rainer Maria Rilke: Zitate auf Englisch

Quelle: Letters to a Young Poet

Quelle: Duino Elegies

Quelle: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Variante: Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
Quelle: Letters to a Young Poet

Quelle: Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Quelle: Duino Elegies (1922)
Kontext: Yes—the springtimes needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)

Quelle: Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Ten (26 December 1908)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Quelle: Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose