I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone
I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone by Rainer Maria Rilke [translated by Annemarie S. Kidder]
I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small enough
to be to you just object and thing, dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying the path which leads to action; and want during times that beg questions, where something is up, to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.
I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection, never be blind or too old to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent; for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be true before you; want to describe myself like a picture I observed for a long time,
one close up, like a new word I learned and embraced, like the everday jug, like my mother’s face,
like a ship that carried me along through the deadliest storm.
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
Whoever you are: in the evening step out of your room,
where you know everything….
With your eyes, which in their weariness
barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold,
you very slowly lift one black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world.
“What troubled him was precisely the appearance of that which he considered indispensable, necessary, and good: the appearance of beauty. He wanted it to be.” (Andreas-Salomé/Rilke)
“Be – and at the same time know the implication of non-being, the endless ground of your inner vibration.” (Elegies/Sonnets 163)
Although he was quickly disabused of his philosophical nationalism, Rilke nevertheless held out for a special terrain devoted to the free traffic of Being. In the Duino Elegies, he distinguishes between the boundaries of poetic dwelling and the marketplace with a sarcastic description of urban life:
For adults only
there’s something special to see: coins copulating,
not just acting, but actually, their gold genitals, every
thing, the whole operation – educational and guaranteed
to arouse you.
