"What gives the Duino Elegies their visceral potency is Rilke's
determination to cherish life in direct confrontation with what robs us
of life. In the face of impermanence and death, it takes courage to
love the things of this world and to believe that praising them is our
noblest calling.
Rilke's is not a conditional courage, dependent on an
afterlife. Nor is it a stoic courage, keeping a stiff upper lip when
shattered by loss. It is courage born of the ever-unexpected discovery
that acceptance of mortality yields an expansion of being. In naming
what is doomed to disappear, naming the way it keeps streaming through
our hands, we can hear the song that streaming makes.
Our view of
reality shifts from noun to verb. We become part of the dance."
I like this. It sounds very Mills - we were often exhorted to become "part of the conversation," and this is very like what was meant.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it a gorgeous thought/phrase? I like the final graphic to illustrate it.
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