Rainer Maria Rilke

From one of the most famous poets in history comes a new selection of writings to bereaved friends and acquaintances, providing comfort in a time of grief and words to soothe the soul. 'A treasure. The solace Rilke offers is uncommon, uplifting and necessary' OBSERVER Throughout his life, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke addressed letters to individuals who were close to him, who had contacted him after reading his works, or who he had met briefly – anyone with whom he felt an inner connection. Within his vast correspondence, there are about two dozen letters of condolence. In these direct, personal and practical letters, Rilke writes about loss and mortality, assuming the role of a sensitive, serious and uplifting guide through life's difficulties. He consoles a friend on the loss of her nephew, which she experienced like the loss of her own child; a mentor on the death of her dog; and an acquaintance struggling to cope with the end of a friendship. The result is a profound vision of mourning and a meditation on the role of pain in our lives, as well as a soothing guide for how to get through it. Where things become truly difficult and unbearable, we find ourselves in a place already very close to its transformation...

Letters for the Grieving Heart

The Dark Interval

maia

Today, my attitude toward death is that it frightens me more in those whom I failed to truly encounter and who remained inexplicable or disastrous to me, than it does in those whom I loved with certainty when they were alive, even if they burst only for a brief moment into the radiant transfiguration of intimacy which love can reach.

No constellation is as steadfast, no accomplishment as irrevocable as a connection between human beings which, at the very moment it becomes visible, works more forcefully in those invisible depths where our existence is as lasting as gold lodged in stone, more constant than a star.

Laura Mei

ame 

And while I am completely engulfed in my sadnes, I am happy to sense that you exist, beautiful one. 

Through life and death. We must live in both, be intimately at home in both.

It is still this death which continues inside of me, which works in me, which transforms my heart, which deepens the red of my blood, which bears down heavily on the life that had been ours so that this death becomes a bittersweet drop coursing through my veins and permeating everything, and which ought to be mine forever.

This is why I agree with you, my dear friend, when you say that you mourn those "who go away" Alas, only those can go away from us whom we never possessed.

Sidie, through life and death. We must live in both, be intimately at home in both.

Alas, if I could tell you just how I know it, then deep within your mourning, a tiny kernel of dark joy would take shape. Make it your ambition to take heart. Start doing so this very evening by playing Beethoven; he also was committed to the whole.

What I really would like to hear much more about at the right time is that knot of coincidences which, as you suggest, İs actually what keeps you confined in bodily pain.

Death, especially the most completely felt and experienced death, has never remained an obstacle to life for a Surviving individual, because its innermost essence is not contrary to us (as one may occasionally suspect), but it is more knowing about life than we are in Our most vital moments.

The Dark Interval quotes

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