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June 15, 2007
rilke on rodin iv
Thus it came about that none of the drama of Life remained unexplored by this earnest, concentrated worker, who had never sought subjects nor desired anything which lay beyond the range of his own ever-maturing technique: all the depths of nights of Love were revealed to him, all the dark, passionate and sorrowful spaciousness in which, as in a world still heroic, clothing was unknown, in which faces were blotted out and the human body came into its own. With senses at white heat, as a seeker after Life, he entered the great confusion of this struggle, and what he beheld was: Life.
Here was life, a thousand-fold in every moment, in longing and sorrow, in madness and fear, in loss and gain. Here was desire immeasurable, thirst so great that all the waters of the world dried in it like a single drop, here was neither deception nor denial, and here the gestures of giving and receiving were real, were great. Here were vices and blasphemies, damnation and bliss, and suddenly one understood that a world which concealed and hid all this, which treated it as if it did not exist, must indeed be poor. It did exist.
And, less distracted by the multiplicity of things, he felt himself better able to recognize in all this the eternal, that which made suffering a good, travail a bringing forth of life, and pain beautiful.
Rilke - Auguste Rodin
Posted by amin at June 15, 2007 11:23 AM