And the bonus is, it wasn’t written by me, but by someone much better, and better still, now long since gone past the point of copyright concerns!
Besides, the letter is written to someone named Kappus, which I repeatedly misread as Krappus, so that’s comic gold right there…
Rome, 23 December 1903
My dear Mr Kappus,
You shall not go without greetings from me at Christmas time, when you are perhaps finding your solitude harder than usual to bear among all the festivities. But if you notice that it is great, then be glad of it; for what (you must ask yourself) would a solitude be that was not great?
There is only one solitude, and it is vast and not easy to bear and almost everyone has moments when they would happily exchange it for some form of company, be it ever so banal or trivial, for the illusion of some slight correspondence with whoever one happens to come across, however unworthy …
But perhaps those are precisely the hours when solitude grows, for its growth is painful like the growth of boys and sad like the beginning of spring. But that must not put you off. What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew as a child, when the grown-ups went back and forth bound up in things which seemed grave and weighty because they looked so busy, and because one had no idea what they were up to.
And when one day you realize that their preoccupations are meagre, their professions barren and no longer connected to life, why not continue to look on them like a child, as if on something alien, drawing on the depths of your own world, on the expanse of your own solitude, which itself is work and achievement and a vocation?
Why wish to exchange a child’s wise incomprehension for rejection and contempt, when incomprehension is solitude, whereas rejection and contempt are ways of participating in what, by precisely these means, you want to sever yourself from?
- R. M. Rilke
This is superb! Thank you so much for sharing. It’s reassuring to be reminded that the newish trend of being present in the NOW and developing our ability to be in silence more frequently and be (more than) okay with that is knowledge that has always been known and practiced, probably as far back as humans have existed. It often feels like so few understand and accept this way of living (including myself for the better part of my years) but also comforting to know that there are and always have been folks who get it. Peace exists in the silence.