Prompts for Rilke

** Rilke's sonnet cycle is entitled "Sonnets to Orpheus." Why Orpheus? What is his relation to Dionysus or Apollo?

** Trace an image that Rilke uses frequently (e.g. angels, birds, etc)

** "For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are just able to endure, and we are so awed by it because it serenely disdains to destroy us" (Elegy 3). Say more :)

** Is love consoling, sweet, and gentle to Rilke, or is it a more powerful force. Explain.

This is Your Fault LHW!! lol

Ok, so after finally getting through the reading, I've been left to think - to the tune of soul-raping music - about what I've read. I thought So much that I actually typed it up, this time. So yeah, I feel that since it has been your readings that got me to these thoughts, I'd share them with you (all)..
I dunno - maybe I'm hoping you or someone could explain to Me why I'm so f@#&!$ up.. lol

Life is a Pretty Shade of Grey

“There wasn’t a creak that your smile could not explain,
as though you had long known just when the floor would do that…
And he listened and was soothed. So powerful was your presence
as you tenderly stood by the bed; his fate,
tall and cloaked, retreated behind the wardrobe, and his restless
future, delayed for a while, adapted to the folds of the curtain.

And he himself, as he lay there, relieved, with the sweetness
of the gentle world you had made for him dissolving beneath
his drowsy eyelids, into the foretaste of sleep --:
He seemed protected…” – Rilke, The Third Elegy of The Duino Elegies

“When Silenus at last fell into his hands, the king asked what was the best and most desirable of all things for man. Fixed and immovable, the demigod said not a word; till at last, urged by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and broke out into these words: ‘Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do ye compel me to tell you what it were most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is beyond your reach forever: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you – is quickly to die.’” – Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

"I remember once, imagining what my life would be like - what I would be like. I pictured having all these qualities - strong, positive qualities - that people could pick up on from across a room. But as time passed, few ever became any qualities I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced, and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer, until finally they got reduced to one – to who I am.” – The Weatherman

My mood is strange. I cheer for my youth, and of the same instant, feel doomed to the same bleak gray that consumes anyone of age. I feel that with all of my dreams and ambitions; all of my talent and love for myself and my capabilities – that I may find myself some 20 years from today, distant from who I am in state of mind, and just as complacent and drained as everyone else around me. I want to express this better, for it is not as negative as I depict; this works more so as a matter of course.

These years are a weird space. You know that your life is still ahead of you, and that you have time to obtain your expected greatness, but in the same instant you feel pressured by time – you come to realize that it moves quick, and life moves faster, and surely enough, if you do not do something now, you will end up just like every other adult that looks at you with that slightly hopeful disdain. With this flux and flex in one’s timeline, he is easily lost to the world he has been brought to believe in. You realize that every day brings new questions and new things to consider. Love, not yet thoroughly understood, weakens us. We easily fall victim to it, and as it were the air and the poisons it carries, consider it necessary. In love I assume we lose ourselves, our confidence, our intelligence. But I suppose, also, that these may be more questions. Questions, now, that I would wish to find an end to, rather than any answer.

As time goes by, one never seems to end up with less questions than he began with..

There is just so much here. The Greatness in youth lies in the hope one has and the warmth many a story foretells. We are promised pains from birth, but it seems now that there is the lie the adult feels it so necessary to tell a child: that these pains are merely the bumps in a path to greatness. That hurt and loss and agony and in its very nature, tragedy, are the stones upon which we stand and conquer on the path towards greatness. Similar to the treacherous climb up a muddy hill to reach the top in time to catch the most inspired sunset, and the greenest, easiest walk back down to your end.

I am doubtful to ever assume I could now understand what life will be to me in twice my years, but no longer do I find it possible that it ends in serene greens. No, instead, I read the words of Rainer and think on the quotes of older, wiser men, and they speak nothing on the easing of the world with time. No, nothing short of death seems to give you release from this. Instead, it seems that as we come to expect gravity to hold us to this Earth, as an artist masters his craft, as most of us find even in childhood that all we want and desire is not always to be ours – that pain will weigh us down, we will find that there is technique in expecting and tolerating disappointments, and we shall find a certain, simple, weak gratitude for the little beauties that may find us, knowing fully well that this splendor is, in fact, more the stepping stone to promised misery. It seems time will desensitize us, and we will soon forget why exactly a rose is so beautiful – in fact, we should forget that this rose is even red. Or that our sky is blue, or that our existence, our choices, and our opportunities were once beautiful, as well. Love will exist in its truest form, and the whimsical myths that wrap themselves around this word in youth will fall away, revealing to us that we have lived a dream, altogether demolished, and love then will be terrifying, as are the angels. We, too, will find the truths a wiser man has not the heart or patience to explain to us. And in our hearts and minds, the space to dream and to explore and to wonder and to feel – will all be filled, to handle the despair; for it does not wither away in life. Instead, we, masters of our craft, will have come to understand how to bare it.

What the Hell do you do with that???

-Cory Higginbottom