Schmargendorf
October 28, 1900
You have a knack for making letters as beautiful as evening hours. I read your letter frequently, and you should read and treasure what I wrote in response when you receive it, in the evening.
Strophes
I am with you, you Sunday evening ones.
My life is radiantly glowing and bright.
I am conversing, but compared to other times
all words have fled my lips and mind,
so that my silence rises up and blooms.For these are songs: a beautiful silence of many,
that rises up from one person in rays.
The violin player is always alone,—
And, among the others, the slim player
is the most silent one, the one who does not speak.I am with you, you gentle and attentive ones.
You are the columns of my solitude.
I am with you: do not give me a name,
so that I can be with you even from afar …
Just as great, sprawling gardens
sometimes bear words of foreign woods
on their quiet, darkening paths …You are quite close to how I feel. I am
not mistaken. This hour now resembles
the hours with the white background.
Around me, the silence resounds with many sounds.
Music! Music! Orderer of sounds,
take what is scattered here at dusk,
lure pearls, rolled away, back onto strands …Each thing locks in a prisoner.
Go, music, to each thing and lead
out of every thing’s doorway
the longtime fearful figures.
In pairs that hold each other’s hands
they follow you and go along the measures
with which we count the hours deep,—
they go, regally, their heads in wreaths,
from our rooms which had forgotten us.I am with you, who listen to the sound,
that always hums and for which we sometimes exist;
we lost our fear that it will fade away.
Music is creation. Soul of song,
many things you turn into a structure,
by entering into those many things.
With you all women are one woman;
you link those—who are girls like silver rings
into cool chains that tie together spring.
To boys you give a sense that they could find a
spot toward which the world extends,
and old people already blinded by the day
live on only because they lean on you.
And men have longed for you.I am with you. Among brothers, among trees,
one is as calm as when amongst you all.
I glean from dreams this sense of feeling soothed:
this being-without-fear of missing something
and this pleasure taken in what one knows.
Simple existence, offered to the heavens,
like ponds that stay forever open,
telling more beautifully of the wind’s experience,
and holding days and evening breeze,
safe above the abyss that is eternal.I am with you. Am thankful to you both
who are like sisters of my soul;
for my soul wears a girl’s dress
and its hair is silken to the touch.
I rarely glimpse its cool hands;
for behind walls it lives quite far away,
as if in a tower not yet sprung free
by me, and hardly aware that I will arrive.But I pass through the winds of earth
toward the rising wall,
behind which, in uncomprehended grief,
resides my soul … You know it better;
you’ve seen it, more familiar than myself.
You are the sisters of my bride.
……………
Be good to it.
Be kind to it, the blond sister here.
Speak to it with the rising moon.
Tell her of yourselves. Tell her about me.
I am waiting for a very beautiful hour, and the most beautiful, most open, and most receptive that arrives I will carry to Maid. For you must measure my capacity to give against what I have received. I am an echo. And you were a great sound whose concluding syllables I repeat from afar. Give my regards to Clara Westhoff with this Sunday letter.
Yours, Rainer Maria Rilke
Very beautiful...