致一位青年詩人的信Letters to a Young Poet(8)

Borgeby gard, Fladie, Sweden

August 12, 1904

Iwant to talk to you again for a little while, dear Mr. Kappus, although thereis almost nothing I can say that will help you, and I can hardly find one usefulword. You have had many sadnesses, large ones, which passed. And you say thateven this passing was difficult and upsetting for you. But please, ask yourselfwhether these large sadnesses haven't rather gone right through you. Perhapsmany things inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, someplace deepinside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad. Theonly sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carryaround in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases thatare treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a shortinterval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and arelife, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of. Ifonly it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, andeven a little beyond the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bearour sadnesses with greater trust than we have in our joys. For they are themoments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings growmute in shy embarrassment, everything in us withdraws, a silence arises, andthe new experience, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and saysnothing.

Itseems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feelas paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Becausewe are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; becauseeverything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; becausewe stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That iswhy the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has beenadded, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is nolonger even there, is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what itwas. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we havechanged, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who hascome, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the futureenters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one issad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our futuresteps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidentalpoint of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, themore patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely thenew presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more itbecomes our fate; and later on, when it "happens" (that is, stepsforth out of us to other people), we will feel related and close to it in ourinnermost being. And that is necessary. It is necessary - and toward this pointour development will move, little by little - that nothing alien happen to us,but only what has long been our own. People have already had to rethink so manyconcepts of motion; and they will also gradually come to realize that what wecall fate does not come into us from the outside, but emerges from us. It isonly because so many people have not absorbed and transformed their fates whilethey were living in them that they have not realized what was emerging fromthem; it was so alien to them that, in their confusion and fear, they thoughtit must have entered them at the very moment they became aware of it, for theyswore they had never before found anything like that inside them. just aspeople for a long time had a wrong idea about the sun's motion, they are evennow wrong about the motion of what is to come. The future stands still, dearMr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space.

Howcould it not be difficult for us?

Andto speak of solitude again, it becomes clearer and clearer that fundamentallythis is nothing that one can choose or refRain from. We are solitary. We candelude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all. Buthow much better it is to recognize that we are alone; yes, even to begin fromthis realization. It will, of course, make us dizzy; for all points that oureyes used to rest on are taken away from us, there is no longer anything nearus, and everything far away is infinitely far. A man taken out of his room and,almost without preparation or transition, placed on the heights of a greatmountain range, would feel something like that: an unequalled insecurity, anabandonment to the nameless, would almost annihilate him. He would feel he wasfalling or think he was being catapulted out into space or exploded into athousand pieces: what a colossal lie his brain would have to invent in order tocatch up with and explain the situation of his senses. That is how alldistances, all measures, change for the person who becomes solitary; many ofthese changes occur suddenly and then, as with the man on the mountaintop,unusual fantasies and strange feelings arise, which seem to grow out beyond allthat is bearable. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We mustaccept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even theunprecedented, must be possible within it. This is in the end the only kind ofcourage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual,most inexplicable experiences that can meet us. The fact that people have inthis sense been cowardly has done infinite harm to life; the experiences thatare called it apparitions, the whole so-called "spirit world," death,all these Things that are so closely related to us, have through our dailydefensiveness been so entirely pushed out of life that the senses with which wemight have been able to grasp them have atrophied. To say nothing of God. Butthe fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the reality of theindividual; it has also narrowed the relationship between one human being andanother, which has as it were been lifted out of the riverbed of infinitepossibilities and set down in a fallow place on the bank, where nothinghappens. For it is not only indolence that causes human relationships to berepeated from case to case with such unspeakable monotony and boredom; it istimidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don't think we candeal with. But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't excludeany experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship withanother person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his ownbeing. For if we imagine this being of the individual as a larger or smallerroom, it is obvious that most people come to know only one corner of theirroom, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walkingback and forth. In this way they have a certain security. And yet how much morehuman is the dangerous in security that drives those prisoners in Poe's storiesto feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to theunspeakable terror of their cells. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps orsnares have been set around us, and there is nothing that should frighten orupset us. We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with,and we have, moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come toresemble this life so greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunatemimicry we can hardly be differentiated from everything around us. We have noreason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. Ifit has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belongto us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrangeour life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must alwaystrust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will becomeour most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancientmyths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that atthe last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in ourlives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beautyand courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence,something helpless that wants our love.

Soyou mustn't be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises in front of you,larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light andcloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You mustrealize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you,that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why do you want toshut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since afterall you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do youwant to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming fromand where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst oftransitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there isanything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is themeans by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simplyhelp it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, sincethat is the way it gets better. In you, dear Mr. Kappus, so much is happeningnow; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like some onewho is recovering; for perhaps you are both. And more: you are also the doctor,who has to watch over himself. But in every sickness there are many days whenthe doctor can do nothing but wait. And that is what you, insofar as you areyour own doctor, must now do, more than anything else.

Don'tobserve yourself too closely. Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from whathappens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you tolook with blame (that is: morally) at your past, which naturally has a share ineverything that now meets you. But whatever errors, wishes, and yearnings ofyour boyhood are operating in you now are not what you remember and extraordinary circumstances of a solitary and helpless childhood are sodifficult, so complicated, surrendered to so many influences and at the sametime so cut off from all real connection with life that, where a vice entersit, one may not simply call it a vice. One must be so careful with namesanyway; it is so often the name of an offense that a life shatters upon, notthe nameless and personal action itself, which was perhaps a quite definitenecessity of that life and could have been absorbed by it without any the expenditure of energy seems to you so great only because you overvaluevictory; it is not the "great thing" that you think you haveachieved, although you are right about your feeling; the great thing is thatthere was already something there which you could replace that deception with,something true and real. Without this even your victory would have been just amoral reaction of no great significance; but in fact it has be come a part ofyour life. Your life, dear Mr. Kappus, which I think of with so many goodwishes. Do you remember how that life yearned out of childhood toward the"great thing"? I see that it is now yearning forth beyond the greatthing toward the greater one. That is why it does not cease to be difficult,but that is also why it will not cease to grow.

Andif there is one more thing that I must say to you, it is this: Don't think thatthe person who is trying to comfort you now lives untroubled among the simpleand quiet words that sometimes give you pleasure. His life has much trouble andsadness, and remains far behind yours. If it were otherwise, he would neverhave been able to find those words.

Yours,

RainerMaria Rilke

我想和您再談一會兒，親愛的開普斯先生，雖然我也沒有什麼話能夠幫助您，我幾乎找不出一句有用的話來。您曾有許多悲傷，沉重的悲傷。您說那些即使已經過去了的事情仍舊讓您覺得如此艱難並使您沮喪。但是請問問您自己，這些悲傷是否真的已經過去了？或許在您的內心深處有許多事情已經轉變了；或許在某個地方，在您心靈的深處，當您悲傷的時候，您忽略那些重要的變化。唯一危險和不健康的悲傷就是我們試圖以吵鬧在公共場合進行宣泄的；如同淺薄而愚蠢地對待疾病。它們只是暫時消失了，但轉瞬重又襲來並且更加嚴重。聚集在我們內心的是生活，是那喪失了生命的、遭到拒絕的、失落的生活，是那我們可以爲之死去的生活。如果我們真的有先見之明，即使有一點點預感，我們都將帶着比對快樂更大的信任對待自己的悲傷。因爲悲傷來臨的時刻就是那些新事物、某些未知的東西進入我們心靈的時刻；我們的感情在尷尬的時刻變得木然，我們體內的每一樣東西都在退縮，沉默升起來，無人瞭解的新經驗站在其間，默默無言。

對我來說幾乎我們所有的悲傷都是由緊張造成的，我們感到無助，因爲我們無法聽到自己那令人驚奇的澎湃的生命。因爲我們在那些進入我們體內的陌生時刻是孤獨的；因爲我們信任和習慣的每一樣東西在某個時刻遠離了我們；因爲我們正在轉變，而在這之中我們無法站立。而後悲傷過去了：新的面貌出現在我們體內，這新的面貌是被加上去的，進入了我們的心，進入了心房深處，不單在那兒，--還已經進入我們的血管。我們不知道它是什麼。我們輕易地就相信什麼都沒有發生，但是我們已經變了，如同有客人進入的房子發生的變化。我們不能說是誰來了，或許我們永遠不會知道，但是許多信號表明未來以這種方式進入了我們體內並在我們體內發生轉變，然後真地轉變了。這就是當人們感到悲傷時如此需要孤獨和專注的原因：因爲當未來進入我們體內的時候，那些看起來平凡而靜止的時刻比那些喧鬧着的偶然時刻更加接近我們的生命，而那些時光似乎僅僅在外部影響我們。我們越安靜，在我們的孤獨裏邊更加耐心和開放，進入我們體內的新形式就會越深刻和安詳，我們也就越發能找到我們自己，發現自己的命運；然後，當它"發生"的時候（也就是，離開我們而走入他人），我們的心靈深處將感覺和它是關聯的，是貼近的。而那是必要的，之所以必要--是因爲我們將朝向這一點發展，慢慢地--對我們來說一點也不陌生，那是我們自己的。人們一定已經考慮過有關運動這一概念；他們也將逐漸認識到我們所說的命運不會來自我們外部，而是從我們體內誕生。但是有太多的人不能接受和轉變自己的命運，他們沒有認識到命運要由自己決定。對他們來說它是太陌生了，他們恐懼、擔心，他們認爲在知道之前的某一時刻命運已經安排好了，因爲他們發誓從沒有在自己體內找到什麼命運。正如很久以來人們對太陽的運動抱着錯誤的觀念一樣，他們對於將要來的運動也抱着錯誤的觀念。未來靜靜地站在那裏，親愛的開普斯先生，但是我們卻在無限的空間裏運

動。

對我們來說怎麼能不難呢？

讓我們再來談談孤獨吧，我們越來越清楚地知道這是人們無法選擇和避免的。我們是孤獨的。我們能夠迷惑自己，使自己看起來似乎並不孤獨。但也不過如此了。但是認識到我們是孤獨的該有多好；是的，甚至從這種認知處開始。當然，孤獨將使我們暈亂；所有那些我們熟識的都離我們遠去，沒有任何東西靠近我們，而遠者確實又是那麼遙遠。那個從自己房間裏出來的人，在還沒有任何準備的情況下，被置於高山之巔，感覺就象這樣：無邊的恐懼感和莫名的遺棄感幾乎將他吞併。他將感到自己在墜落或認爲將被拋入太空，或爆炸成無數個碎片；他的頭腦裏蟄伏着巨大的謊言，幫助他抓住那感覺併爲其做出解釋。所有距離，所有尺寸都在爲這個成爲孤獨者的人而改變；許多變化突然之間產生，然後當這個人站在山巔之上的時候，一種不同尋常的幻象和奇妙的感覺產生了，它的成長似乎令人無法忍受。但是對我們來說經歷這種感覺卻是必要的。我們必須儘可能地接受現實；每一件事，即使是空前的，前所未有的，也一定埋藏在其間。這就是我們最終需要的勇氣：勇敢地面對全然的陌生、非同尋常的事物、難以言表的經驗。事實證明在這種感覺面前怯懦的人在生活中也受到了無限的傷害；那些經驗就叫做"幻影"，所謂的"精神世界"，死亡，所有這些事物都與我們如此接近，然而我們在日常生活中排斥它們，使得本來可以輕易抓取他們的神經日趨萎縮。並說一切均和上帝無關。但是對不可思議的恐懼使人們的現實世界變得赤貧，使人與人之間的關係變得狹隘。

人們好象被從河牀中無限提升起來，並被放到岸上一塊閒置的土地上。那兒不曾發生過任何事情。並不是只有懶惰才使人們之間的關係變得如此千篇一律的單調和枯燥，還有那在接受任何新的、難以置信的經驗之前的怯懦。我們以爲自己不能處理這些新的事物。

只有那些已經有所準備，不排斥任何經驗--即使是最複雜的經驗--的人才能夠和別人維持良好的關係，並認識自己的靈魂。讓我們把這個個體的人想象成一個或大或小的房間，顯然，多數人只知道房間的一個角落，靠近窗戶的地方，他們來回走動的那一地帶。

在這種情況下他們感到很安全。然而有多少超越人性的危險的不安全感驅使那些故事中的囚徒去感受可怕的地牢之外的世界，並極力讓自己熟悉關押自己的可怕的囚室。然而，我們不是囚徒。在我們周圍也沒有欄杆或者陷阱，沒有什麼值得我們爲之懼怕或沮喪。我們已經融入生活融入大多數人遵循的自然環境，而且通過上千年的吸納，當我們保持安靜的時候，我們已經和這種生活如此類似，模擬使得我們幾乎和自己周圍的一切難以區分。我們沒有理由對這個世界不信任，因爲它並沒有反對我們。如果有恐懼，它們是我們的恐懼；如果有深淵，它們是我們的深淵；如果有危險，我們必須嘗試着熱愛它們。如果我們按照這個原則來安排生活--我們必須總是相信困難--那麼在我們眼前出現的全然陌生的事物將成爲我們最熟悉、最信任的經驗。我們怎能忘記那些在我們所有種族產生之時的古老神話，那有關龍在最後一刻變成公主的傳說？或許我們生活中的所有的龍都是公主，她們在等待我們行動，伴着美麗和勇氣，僅一次足矣。或許，讓我們懼怕的每一件事情，在其最深處，正無助地等待着我們的愛。

所以，不要害怕，親愛的開普斯先生，如果悲哀來臨，大得無法承受；如果渴望來臨，象閃電和烏雲擊打在您的手上、在您所做的一切之上，您必須認識到有些什麼降臨到了您的身上，生活還沒有忘記您，它正用自己的手託着您，使您無法掉下去。爲什麼您要在自己還不明白那些憂慮、哀傷和失望能夠帶給您什麼之前將自己的生活關閉呢？爲什麼您要讓自己沉浸在追尋它的來龍去脈的苦惱中呢？既然您知道，終究您自己是在一個過渡的階段，您希望什麼都不要改變。如果在您的反應當中有什麼不健康的事情發生，您只當它們是您的器官爲了將自己從異物中放逐出來；所以就讓它病吧，讓疾病來吧，讓它爆發吧，因爲這是使身體恢復的最好辦法。在您的體內，親愛的開普斯先生，到如今已經發生了太多的事情；您必須耐心些，和那些病人一樣耐心；如正在恢復的人一樣耐心；或者兩者兼備；還有：您自己也是醫生，您在觀察自己。但是在醫治每一樣疾病的時候，有許多天醫生都只能觀望、等待。這就如同您的現在一樣，目前您是您自己的醫生，現在您能做的，也只是等待。

不要太近地觀察自己。不要對發生在自己身上的事情過早地下結論；讓它發生。否則您將無法帶着責備看待過去發生的事情，而那是正常的，它和您正在遭遇的每一件事情是一脈相承的。但是在您童年時代產生的無論是多深的恐懼、希望和渴望都已經不是今天的您所能牢記和譴責的了。孤獨的那種特別環境和無助的孩提時代都是那麼困難，那麼複雜，受着那麼多的影響，同時又和實際生活中的聯繫切斷，邪惡來了，但是也不能單純地將它喚做邪惡。人們必須小心地對待名稱，一個攻擊性的名稱常常能將其描述的生活粉碎，不是無名的或個人行爲本身，或許它只是那種生活的一個必需品，能夠在不製造任何麻煩的情況下被吸收。而精力的耗竭在您看來卻如此偉大，僅僅因爲您過高估計了勝利；並不是認爲的"偉大的事情"取得了勝利，儘管您的感覺是對的；偉大的事情實際上是那些能夠代替詭計的真實。如果沒有這些，您的勝利有可能只是一些微不足道的事情的正常反映，而事實上它已經成爲了您生命的一部分。

您的生活，親愛的開普斯先生，一定充滿了美好的願望。您記得生活怎樣衝破了孩提時代向着"偉大的事情"呼嘯而去的情景嗎？我現在就能看見那情景，它正越過偉大的事情向着更偉大走去。因此停下來是困難的，也是它不會停止不前的原因。如果還有什麼我需要向您說的話，那就是：不要認爲那個現在試圖用簡單寧靜的語言來安慰您並有時能給您帶來快樂的人的生活是順利的。他的生活有許多麻煩和悲哀，並且可能還不如您。否則，他將永遠找不到這些話語。

您的，

瑞那.瑪里亞.李爾克

瑞典

1904年8月12日