Back in Harlösa in the afternoon I went to the library to collect the English
books I ordered. Only one of the four
I requested had arrived. “Letters to a young poet” by Rilke. I’ve got a
digital version in my computer but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to have a
proper paper copy in the house.
After the artist talk in the evening, meeting loads of
people and talking about many different things, I sit in the house with a glass
of wine and open the book. I read it many times in the past years. Now I brouse
through the letters. I arrive at the eighth letter. And read it is written in
Flädie, Sweden, 12 August 1904.
“Were it possible, we might look beyond the reach of our
knowing and yet a bit further into the past across the farmsteads of our
ancestors. Then perhaps we would endure our griefs with even greater trust than
our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us,
something unfamiliar. Our feelings become mute in timid shyness. Everything
within us steps back; a silence ensues, and the something new, known to no one,
stands in the center and is silent. ... And this is the reason the sadness
passes: the something new within us, the thing that has joined us, has entered
our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer there
either -
it is already in the blood. And we do not find out what it was. One
could easily make us believe that nothing happened; and yet we have been
changed, as a house is changed when a guest has entered it. We cannot say who
came; we shall perhaps never know. But many signals affirm that the future has
stepped into us in such a way as to
change itself into us...”
