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August 17, 2007
the price of solitude
Do you remember Baudelaire’s incredible poem “Une Charohne”? Perhaps I understand it now. Except for the last stanza, he was in the right. What should he have done after that happened to him? It was his task to see, in this terrifying and apparently repulsive object, the Being that underlies all beings. There is no choice, no refusal. Do you think it was by chance that Flaubert wrote his “Saint Julien l’Hospitalier”? This, it seems to me, is the test: whether you can bring yourself to lie beside a leper and warm him with the warmth of your heart-such an action could only have good results.
But don’t think that I am suffering from disenchantment here-on the contrary. I am sometimes astonished by how readily I have given up everything I expected, in exchange for what is real, even when that is awful.
My God, if only something of this could be shared. But would it be then; would it be? No, it is only at the price of solitude.
Rilke - The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Posted by amin at August 17, 2007 6:01 PM