EPISODE · Dec 11, 2018 · 14 MIN
Rilke's Duino Elegies--#9
from cosmic dream radio · host laylage
www.luminouswork.org/podcast. If you are alone at cliff’s edge, beaten by a harsh salt wind, the ruins of the 11th century behind you, a steep rocky drop to the sea before you—I can think of no better company than Rilke, who, in just such a position, heard: “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the hierarchies of angels? ” That’s the first line of his first elegy written at Duino Castle in Italy in 1910. All ten elegies were published in 1923. Today I will read for you the ninth one. read my entire essay here The book I’m reading from.
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Why have to be human? Oh not because happiness exists. Not out of curiosity, not as practice for the heart. But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all. Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too, just once. And never again. But to have been this once, completely, even if only once: to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing. (tr: Stephen Mitchell)
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Rilke's Duino Elegies--#9
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