致一位青年詩人的信Letters to a Young Poet(8)

Borgeby gard, Fladie, Sweden

August 12, 1904

I want to talk to you again for a little while, dear Mr. Kappus, although there is almost nothing I can say that will help you, and I can hardly find one useful word. You have had many sadnesses, large ones, which passed. And you say that even this passing was difficult and upsetting for you. But please, ask yourself whether these large sadnesses haven't rather gone right through you. Perhaps many things inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad. The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of. If only it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, and even a little beyond the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust than we have in our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, everything in us withdraws, a silence arises, and the new experience, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and says nothing.

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate; and later on, when it "happens" (that is, steps forth out of us to other people), we will feel related and close to it in our innermost being. And that is necessary. It is necessary - and toward this point our development will move, little by little - that nothing alien happen to us, but only what has long been our own. People have already had to rethink so many concepts of motion; and they will also gradually come to realize that what we call fate does not come into us from the outside, but emerges from us. It is only because so many people have not absorbed and transformed their fates while they were living in them that they have not realized what was emerging from them; it was so alien to them that, in their confusion and fear, they thought it must have entered them at the very moment they became aware of it, for they swore they had never before found anything like that inside them. just as people for a long time had a wrong idea about the sun's motion, they are even now wrong about the motion of what is to come. The future stands still, dear Mr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space.

How could it not be difficult for us?

And to speak of solitude again, it becomes clearer and clearer that fundamentally this is nothing that one can choose or refrain from. We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all. But how much better it is to recognize that we are alone; yes, even to begin from this realization. It will, of course, make us dizzy; for all points that our eyes used to rest on are taken away from us, there is no longer anything near us, and everything far away is infinitely far. A man taken out of his room and, almost without preparation or transition, placed on the heights of a great mountain range, would feel something like that: an unequalled insecurity, an abandonment to the nameless, would almost annihilate him. He would feel he was falling or think he was being catapulted out into space or exploded into a thousand pieces: what a colossal lie his brain would have to invent in order to catch up with and explain the situation of his senses. That is how all distances, all measures, change for the person who becomes solitary; many of these changes occur suddenly and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, unusual fantasies and strange feelings arise, which seem to grow out beyond all that is bearable. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it. This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us. The fact that people have in this sense been cowardly has done infinite harm to life; the experiences that are called it apparitions, the whole so-called "spirit world," death, all these Things that are so closely related to us, have through our daily defensiveness been so entirely pushed out of life that the senses with which we might have been able to grasp them have atrophied. To say nothing of God. But the fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the reality of the individual; it has also narrowed the relationship between one human being and another, which has as it were been lifted out of the riverbed of infinite possibilities and set down in a fallow place on the bank, where nothing happens. For it is not only indolence that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such unspeakable monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don't think we can deal with. But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being. For if we imagine this being of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it is obvious that most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth. In this way they have a certain security. And yet how much more human is the dangerous in security that drives those prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their cells. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares have been set around us, and there is nothing that should frighten or upset us. We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have, moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly be differentiated from everything around us. We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

So you mustn't be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. In you, dear Mr. Kappus, so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like some one who is recovering; for perhaps you are both. And more: you are also the doctor, who has to watch over himself. But in every sickness there are many days when the doctor can do nothing but wait. And that is what you, insofar as you are your own doctor, must now do, more than anything else.

Don't observe yourself too closely. Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame (that is: morally) at your past, which naturally has a share in everything that now meets you. But whatever errors, wishes, and yearnings of your boyhood are operating in you now are not what you remember and condemn. The extraordinary circumstances of a solitary and helpless childhood are so difficult, so complicated, surrendered to so many influences and at the same time so cut off from all real connection with life that, where a vice enters it, one may not simply call it a vice. One must be so careful with names anyway; it is so often the name of an offense that a life shatters upon, not the nameless and personal action itself, which was perhaps a quite definite necessity of that life and could have been absorbed by it without any trouble. And the expenditure of energy seems to you so great only because you overvalue victory; it is not the "great thing" that you think you have achieved, although you are right about your feeling; the great thing is that there was already something there which you could replace that deception with, something true and real. Without this even your victory would have been just a moral reaction of no great significance; but in fact it has be come a part of your life. Your life, dear Mr. Kappus, which I think of with so many good wishes. Do you remember how that life yearned out of childhood toward the "great thing"? I see that it is now yearning forth beyond the great thing toward the greater one. That is why it does not cease to be difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow.

And if there is one more thing that I must say to you, it is this: Don't think that the person who is trying to comfort you now lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes give you pleasure. His life has much trouble and sadness, and remains far behind yours. If it were otherwise, he would never have been able to find those words.

Yours,

Rainer Maria Rilke

我想和您再談一會兒，親愛的開普斯先生，雖然我也沒有什么話能夠幫助您，我?guī)缀跽也怀鲆痪溆杏玫脑拋?。您曾有許多悲傷，沉重的悲傷。您說那些即使已經(jīng)過去了的事情仍舊讓您覺得如此艱難并使您沮喪。但是請問問您自己，這些悲傷是否真的已經(jīng)過去了?或許在您的內(nèi)心深處有許多事情已經(jīng)轉(zhuǎn)變了;或許在某個地方，在您心靈的深處，當(dāng)您悲傷的時候，您忽略那些重要的變化。唯一危險和不健康的悲傷就是我們試圖以吵鬧在公共場合進(jìn)行宣泄的;如同淺薄而愚蠢地對待疾病。它們只是暫時消失了，但轉(zhuǎn)瞬重又襲來并且更加嚴(yán)重。聚集在我們內(nèi)心的是生活，是那喪失了生命的、遭到拒絕的、失落的生活，是那我們可以為之死去的生活。如果我們真的有先見之明，即使有一點點預(yù)感，我們都將帶著比對快樂更大的信任對待自己的悲傷。因為悲傷來臨的時刻就是那些新事物、某些未知的東西進(jìn)入我們心靈的時刻;我們的感情在尷尬的時刻變得木然，我們體內(nèi)的每一樣?xùn)|西都在退縮，沉默升起來，無人了解的新經(jīng)驗站在其間，默默無言。

對我來說幾乎我們所有的悲傷都是由緊張造成的，我們感到無助，因為我們無法聽到自己那令人驚奇的澎湃的生命。因為我們在那些進(jìn)入我們體內(nèi)的陌生時刻是孤獨的;因為我們信任和習(xí)慣的每一樣?xùn)|西在某個時刻遠(yuǎn)離了我們;因為我們正在轉(zhuǎn)變，而在這之中我們無法站立。而后悲傷過去了：新的面貌出現(xiàn)在我們體內(nèi)，這新的面貌是被加上去的，進(jìn)入了我們的心，進(jìn)入了心房深處，不單在那兒，--還已經(jīng)進(jìn)入我們的血管。我們不知道它是什么。我們輕易地就相信什么都沒有發(fā)生，但是我們已經(jīng)變了，如同有客人進(jìn)入的房子發(fā)生的變化。我們不能說是誰來了，或許我們永遠(yuǎn)不會知道，但是許多信號表明未來以這種方式進(jìn)入了我們體內(nèi)并在我們體內(nèi)發(fā)生轉(zhuǎn)變，然后真地轉(zhuǎn)變了。這就是當(dāng)人們感到悲傷時如此需要孤獨和專注的原因：因為當(dāng)未來進(jìn)入我們體內(nèi)的時候，那些看起來平凡而靜止的時刻比那些喧鬧著的偶然時刻更加接近我們的生命，而那些時光似乎僅僅在外部影響我們。我們越安靜，在我們的孤獨里邊更加耐心和開放，進(jìn)入我們體內(nèi)的新形式就會越深刻和安詳，我們也就越發(fā)能找到我們自己，發(fā)現(xiàn)自己的命運;然后，當(dāng)它"發(fā)生"的時候(也就是，離開我們而走入他人)，我們的心靈深處將感覺和它是關(guān)聯(lián)的，是貼近的。而那是必要的，之所以必要--是因為我們將朝向這一點發(fā)展，慢慢地--對我們來說一點也不陌生，那是我們自己的。人們一定已經(jīng)考慮過有關(guān)運動這一概念;他們也將逐漸認(rèn)識到我們所說的命運不會來自我們外部，而是從我們體內(nèi)誕生。但是有太多的人不能接受和轉(zhuǎn)變自己的命運，他們沒有認(rèn)識到命運要由自己決定。對他們來說它是太陌生了，他們恐懼、擔(dān)心，他們認(rèn)為在知道之前的某一時刻命運已經(jīng)安排好了，因為他們發(fā)誓從沒有在自己體內(nèi)找到什么命運。正如很久以來人們對太陽的運動抱著錯誤的觀念一樣，他們對于將要來的運動也抱著錯誤的觀念。未來靜靜地站在那里，親愛的開普斯先生，但是我們卻在無限的空間里運

動。

對我們來說怎么能不難呢?

讓我們再來談?wù)劰陋毎?，我們越來越清楚地知道這是人們無法選擇和避免的。我們是孤獨的。我們能夠迷惑自己，使自己看起來似乎并不孤獨。但也不過如此了。但是認(rèn)識到我們是孤獨的該有多好;是的，甚至從這種認(rèn)知處開始。當(dāng)然，孤獨將使我們暈亂;所有那些我們熟識的都離我們遠(yuǎn)去，沒有任何東西靠近我們，而遠(yuǎn)者確實又是那么遙遠(yuǎn)。那個從自己房間里出來的人，在還沒有任何準(zhǔn)備的情況下，被置于高山之巔，感覺就象這樣：無邊的恐懼感和莫名的遺棄感幾乎將他吞并。他將感到自己在墜落或認(rèn)為將被拋入太空，或爆炸成無數(shù)個碎片;他的頭腦里蟄伏著巨大的謊言，幫助他抓住那感覺并為其做出解釋。所有距離，所有尺寸都在為這個成為孤獨者的人而改變;許多變化突然之間產(chǎn)生，然后當(dāng)這個人站在山巔之上的時候，一種不同尋常的幻象和奇妙的感覺產(chǎn)生了，它的成長似乎令人無法忍受。但是對我們來說經(jīng)歷這種感覺卻是必要的。我們必須盡可能地接受現(xiàn)實;每一件事，即使是空前的，前所未有的，也一定埋藏在其間。這就是我們最終需要的勇氣：勇敢地面對全然的陌生、非同尋常的事物、難以言表的經(jīng)驗。事實證明在這種感覺面前怯懦的人在生活中也受到了無限的傷害;那些經(jīng)驗就叫做"幻影"，所謂的"精神世界"，死亡，所有這些事物都與我們?nèi)绱私咏?，然而我們在日常生活中排斥它們，使得本來可以輕易抓取他們的神經(jīng)日趨萎縮。并說一切均和上帝無關(guān)。但是對不可思議的恐懼使人們的現(xiàn)實世界變得赤貧，使人與人之間的關(guān)系變得狹隘。

人們好象被從河床中無限提升起來，并被放到岸上一塊閑置的土地上。那兒不曾發(fā)生過任何事情。并不是只有懶惰才使人們之間的關(guān)系變得如此千篇一律的單調(diào)和枯燥，還有那在接受任何新的、難以置信的經(jīng)驗之前的怯懦。我們以為自己不能處理這些新的事物。

只有那些已經(jīng)有所準(zhǔn)備，不排斥任何經(jīng)驗--即使是最復(fù)雜的經(jīng)驗--的人才能夠和別人維持良好的關(guān)系，并認(rèn)識自己的靈魂。讓我們把這個個體的人想象成一個或大或小的房間，顯然，多數(shù)人只知道房間的一個角落，靠近窗戶的地方，他們來回走動的那一地帶。

在這種情況下他們感到很安全。然而有多少超越人性的危險的不安全感驅(qū)使那些故事中的囚徒去感受可怕的地牢之外的世界，并極力讓自己熟悉關(guān)押自己的可怕的囚室。然而，我們不是囚徒。在我們周圍也沒有欄桿或者陷阱，沒有什么值得我們?yōu)橹畱峙禄蚓趩?。我們已?jīng)融入生活融入大多數(shù)人遵循的自然環(huán)境，而且通過上千年的吸納，當(dāng)我們保持安靜的時候，我們已經(jīng)和這種生活如此類似，模擬使得我們幾乎和自己周圍的一切難以區(qū)分。我們沒有理由對這個世界不信任，因為它并沒有反對我們。如果有恐懼，它們是我們的恐懼;如果有深淵，它們是我們的深淵;如果有危險，我們必須嘗試著熱愛它們。如果我們按照這個原則來安排生活--我們必須總是相信困難--那么在我們眼前出現(xiàn)的全然陌生的事物將成為我們最熟悉、最信任的經(jīng)驗。我們怎能忘記那些在我們所有種族產(chǎn)生之時的古老神話，那有關(guān)龍在最后一刻變成公主的傳說?或許我們生活中的所有的龍都是公主，她們在等待我們行動，伴著美麗和勇氣，僅一次足矣。或許，讓我們懼怕的每一件事情，在其最深處，正無助地等待著我們的愛。

所以，不要害怕，親愛的開普斯先生，如果悲哀來臨，大得無法承受;如果渴望來臨，象閃電和烏云擊打在您的手上、在您所做的一切之上，您必須認(rèn)識到有些什么降臨到了您的身上，生活還沒有忘記您，它正用自己的手托著您，使您無法掉下去。為什么您要在自己還不明白那些憂慮、哀傷和失望能夠帶給您什么之前將自己的生活關(guān)閉呢?為什么您要讓自己沉浸在追尋它的來龍去脈的苦惱中呢?既然您知道，終究您自己是在一個過渡的階段，您希望什么都不要改變。如果在您的反應(yīng)當(dāng)中有什么不健康的事情發(fā)生，您只當(dāng)它們是您的器官為了將自己從異物中放逐出來;所以就讓它病吧，讓疾病來吧，讓它爆發(fā)吧，因為這是使身體恢復(fù)的最好辦法。在您的體內(nèi)，親愛的開普斯先生，到如今已經(jīng)發(fā)生了太多的事情;您必須耐心些，和那些病人一樣耐心;如正在恢復(fù)的人一樣耐心;或者兩者兼?zhèn)?還有：您自己也是醫(yī)生，您在觀察自己。但是在醫(yī)治每一樣疾病的時候，有許多天醫(yī)生都只能觀望、等待。這就如同您的現(xiàn)在一樣，目前您是您自己的醫(yī)生，現(xiàn)在您能做的，也只是等待。

不要太近地觀察自己。不要對發(fā)生在自己身上的事情過早地下結(jié)論;讓它發(fā)生。否則您將無法帶著責(zé)備看待過去發(fā)生的事情，而那是正常的，它和您正在遭遇的每一件事情是一脈相承的。但是在您童年時代產(chǎn)生的無論是多深的恐懼、希望和渴望都已經(jīng)不是今天的您所能牢記和譴責(zé)的了。孤獨的那種特別環(huán)境和無助的孩提時代都是那么困難，那么復(fù)雜，受著那么多的影響，同時又和實際生活中的聯(lián)系切斷，邪惡來了，但是也不能單純地將它喚做邪惡。人們必須小心地對待名稱，一個攻擊性的名稱常常能將其描述的生活粉碎，不是無名的或個人行為本身，或許它只是那種生活的一個必需品，能夠在不制造任何麻煩的情況下被吸收。而精力的耗竭在您看來卻如此偉大，僅僅因為您過高估計了勝利;并不是認(rèn)為的"偉大的事情"取得了勝利，盡管您的感覺是對的;偉大的事情實際上是那些能夠代替詭計的真實。如果沒有這些，您的勝利有可能只是一些微不足道的事情的正常反映，而事實上它已經(jīng)成為了您生命的一部分。

您的生活，親愛的開普斯先生，一定充滿了美好的愿望。您記得生活怎樣沖破了孩提時代向著"偉大的事情"呼嘯而去的情景嗎?我現(xiàn)在就能看見那情景，它正越過偉大的事情向著更偉大走去。因此停下來是困難的，也是它不會停止不前的原因。如果還有什么我需要向您說的話，那就是：不要認(rèn)為那個現(xiàn)在試圖用簡單寧靜的語言來安慰您并有時能給您帶來快樂的人的生活是順利的。他的生活有許多麻煩和悲哀，并且可能還不如您。否則，他將永遠(yuǎn)找不到這些話語。

您的，

瑞那.瑪里亞.李爾克

瑞典

1904年8月12日