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October 4, 2007
true consolation
On such days the King was filled with benign awareness. Had a painter of that time been looking for some hint about what heaven was like, he couldn’t have found a more perfect model than the calmed figure of the King, as it stood, in one of the high windows of the Louvre, under the cascade of its shoulders. He was turning the pages of the little book by Christine de Pisan, which is called The Path of Long Study and was dedicated to him. He wasn’t reading the learned polemics of that allegorical parliament which had undertaken to find out what sort of prince would be worthy of ruling over the whole world. The book always opened for him at the simplest passages: where it spoke of the heart which, for thirteen years, has stood like a retort over the fire of grief, its only function to distill the water of bitterness for the eyes; he understood that true consolation only began when happiness had vanished and was gone forever.
Rilke - The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Posted by amin at October 4, 2007 12:18 AM