致一位青年詩人的信 Letters to a Young Poet(7)

Rome

May 14, 1904

My dear Mr. Kappus,

Muchtime has passed since I received your last letter. Please don't hold thatagainst me; first it was work, then a number of interruptions, and finally poorhealth that again and again kept me from answering, because I wanted my answerto come to you out of peaceful and happy days. Now I feel somewhat better again(the beginning of spring with its moody, bad-tempered transitions was hard tobear here too) and once again, dear Mr. Kappus, I can greet you and talk to you(which I do with real pleasure) about this and that in response to your letter,as well as I can.

Yousee: I have copied out your sonnet, because I found that it is lovely andsimple and born in the shape that it moves in with such quiet decorum. It isthe best poem of yours that you have let me read. And now I am giving you thiscopy because I know that it is important and full of new experience torediscover a work of one's own in someone else's handwriting. Read the poem asif you had never seen it before, and you will feel in your innermost being howvery much it is your own.

Itwas a pleasure for me to read this sonnet and your letter, often; I thank youfor both.

Andyou should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that thereis some thing in you that wants to move out of it. This very wish, if you useit calmly and prudently and like a tool, will help you spread out your solitudeover a great distance. Most people have (with the help of conventions) turnedtheir solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy;but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alivetrusts in it, everything, in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can andis spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against allopposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is acertainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitudeis difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to doit.

Itis also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to loveanother human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has beenentrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work forwhich all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who arebeginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they mustlearn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around theirsolitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. Butlearning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a longtime ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened and deepened kindof aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging,surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of twopeople who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a highinducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, tobecome world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it isa great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him tovast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use thelove that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind ofcommunion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save andgather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human livesare as yet barely large enough.

Butthis is what young people are so often and so disastrously wrong in doing: they(who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other whenlove takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all theirmessiness, disorder, bewilderment. And what can happen then? What can life dowith this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and thatthey would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and theirfuture? And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, andloses the other, and many others who still wanted to come. And loses the vastdistances and possibilities, gives up the approaching and fleeing of gentle,prescient Things in exchange for an unfruitful confusion, out of which nothingmore can come; nothing but a bit of disgust, disappointment, and poverty, andthe escape into one of the many conventions that have been put up in greatnumbers like public shelters on this most dangerous road. No area of humanexperience is so extensively provided with conventions as this one is: thereare life-preservers of the most varied invention, boats and water wings;society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferredto take love life as an amusement, it also had to give it an easy form, cheap,safe, and sure, as public amusements are.

Itis true that many young people who love falsely, i.e., simply surrenderingthemselves and giving up their solitude (the average person will of coursealways go on doing that), feel oppressed by their failure and want to make thesituation they have landed in livable and fruitful in their own, personal their nature tells them that the questions of love, even more thaneverything else that is important, cannot be resolved publicly and according tothis or that agreement; that they are questions, intimate questions from onehuman being to another, which in any case require a new, special, whollypersonal answer. But how can they, who have already flung themselves togetherand can no longer tell whose outlines are whose, who thus no longer possessanything of their own, how can they find a way out of themselves, out of thedepths of their already buried solitude?

Theyact out of mutual helplessness, and then if, with the best of intentions, theytry to escape the convention that is approaching them (marriage, for example),they fall into the clutches of some less obvious but just as deadlyconventional solution. For then everything around them is convention. Whereverpeople act out of a prematurely fused, muddy communion, every action isconventional: every relation that such confusion leads to has its ownconvention, how ever unusual (i.e., in the ordinary sense immoral) it may be;even separating would be a conventional step, an impersonal, accidentaldecision without strength and without fruit.

Whoeverlooks seriously will find that neither for death, which is difficult, nor fordifficult love has any clarification, any solution, any hint of a path beenperceived; and for both these tasks, which we carry wrapped up and hand, onwithout opening, there is no general, agreed-upon rule that can be in the same measure in which we begin to test life as individuals, thesegreat Things will come to meet us, the individuals, with greater intimacy. Theclaims that the difficult work of love makes upon our development are greaterthan life, and we, as beginners, are not equal to them. But if we neverthelessendure and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead oflosing ourselves in the whole easy and frivolous game behind which people havehidden from the most solemn solemnity of their being, then a small advance anda lightening will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us. Thatwould be much.

Weare only just now beginning to consider the relation of one individual to asecond individual objectively and without prejudice, and our attempts to livesuch relationships have no model before them. And yet in the changes that timehas brought about there are already many things that can help our timidnovitiate.

Thegirl and the woman, in their new, individual unfolding, will only in passing beimitators of male behavior and misbehavior and repeaters of male r the uncertainty of such transitions, it will become obvious that womenwere going through the abundance and variation of those (often ridiculous)disguises just so that they could purify their own essential nature and washout the deforming influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life lingers anddwells more immediately , more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surelyhave become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, whois not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodilyfruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves. Thishumanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering andhumiliation, will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions ofmere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status, and those men whodo not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it. Someday (and even now,especially in the countries of northern Europe, trustworthy signs are already speakingand shining), someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longermean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something thatmakes one think not of any complement and limit, but only of life and reality:the female human being.

Thisadvance (at first very much against the will of the outdistanced men) willtransform the love experience, which is now filled with error, will change itfrom the ground up, and reshape it into a relationship that is meant to bebetween one human being and another, no longer one that flows from man towoman. And this more human love (which will fulfill itself with infiniteconsideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding andreleasing) will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with greatstruggle: the love that consists in this: that two solitudes protect and borderand greet each other.

Andone more thing: Don't think that the great love which was once granted to you,when you were a boy, has been lost; how can you know whether vast and generouswishes didn't ripen in you at that time, and purposes by which you are stillliving today? I believe that that love remains so strong and intense in yourmemory because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner work thatyou did on your life. - All good wishes to you, dear Mr. Kappus!

Yours,

Rainer Maria Rilke

親愛的開普斯先生：

收到您的信後已有許多時光過去了。請不要因此而反對我；首先是那些工作，其次是紛繁的干擾，還有我差極了的健康一次又一次阻撓我回信，因爲我希望自己能夠在平靜而快樂的時候給您回信。現在我感到好多了（雖然早春的挹鬱、喜怒無常的過渡天氣讓人無法忍受），再次地，我能向您問候並和您談論那些您信裏提到的事情了，且盡我所能。您看：我抄了您的十四行詩，我發現它可愛、簡單，而且形式如此得體。就我讀過的您的作品來說，這是最好的一首。現在我把這首詩抄給您，從別人抄錄的筆跡裏重新溫習自己的作品是一種重要而且全新的經驗。讀它，就好象您從來沒有讀過它，您會感到自己的內在世界有多豐富。--讀這首十四行詩和您的來信，對我來說，常常是一種快樂；爲此，謝謝您。

您不要被自己的孤獨所困惑，事實上您一直想要擺脫它。這個希望，如果您能夠冷靜而慎重地應用，會幫助您跳出孤獨到更廣闊的空間去。大多數人（在習俗的幫助下）將他們的孤獨轉向了舒適和安逸；但是很清楚，我們必須相信這很困難；每一個活着的人都相信它，每一樣自然裏的東西都在成長、抵抗着自己，同時又試圖不惜任何代價成爲它自己，同所有對立面作對。我們所知甚少，但是我們必須相信難的東西是必定不會放棄我們的；孤獨是好的，因爲孤獨是難的；除了難之外一定還有別的更多的原因使我們去做它。

愛也是好的：因爲愛是難的。因爲，一個人去愛另一個人，或許是我們所承受的最困難的事情，是最終的任務、最終的考驗和信仰，爲了這項工作，所有的其他一切都只是在做準備罷了。這就是那些正處於一切開端的年輕人還沒有能力愛的原因。而這正是他們應該學習的。用他們整個的生命，用他們所有的力量，彙集他們所有的孤獨、渴望、躍躍欲試的心，他們必須學習去愛。但是學習的時間總是漫長而孤獨的，因此愛在很長的時間內，愛還沒有進入的生活裏是--：孤獨，對愛着的人來說這是一種孤高而幽深的獨立地存在。開始的時候愛不意味着同另一個人結合、包容和聯爲一體（如果兩個人各自都還是模糊的、未成熟的、無條理的，那將是怎樣的聯繫呀），對個體來說，爲了另一個人而使自己成熟並變成自己，變成世界，變成自己的世界該是多麼大的誘惑呀；對他來說那是偉大的必須的要求，有些東西在選擇他和呼喚他遠離。只有在這種感覺的時候，在那些任務自己做工的時候（"去傾聽和捕捉日日夜夜的時候"），年輕的人們或許可以用那給予他們的愛。合併、包容和每一種聯合都不是爲了他們（人們必須仍舊，花很長很長時間來積累和彙集它們）；它是絕對的，或許是它使人的生命不能那樣強大。但是這是年輕人經常犯的毀滅性的錯誤：當愛抓住他們的時候，他們（稟性沒有耐心的人）盡情作樂，他們分散着自己，就如他們的本來面目一樣，散成混亂的、無秩序的、野蠻的……然後什麼發生了呢？生活能對它們怎麼樣呢？對這些成堆的半碎的東西--他們把它叫做交流，或如可能的話，他們叫它快樂，還有未來？所以每個人都在爲了別人的同時迷失着自己，並丟掉了別人，還有許多不斷要來的別人。丟失了莫大的距離和可能性，放棄了接近和逃離溫柔的、有先見之明的事物，而寧願得到毫無結果的困惑，除此之外什麼都不會來臨；除了一點厭惡、失望和貧窮，還有逃避衆多的諸如鋪在大多數危險的道路上的蓋子般的習俗。就人類的經驗而言再也沒有一個習俗有這一個來得寬泛了；有各種發明，船和滑翔艇的保護者；社會能夠創造各種類型的避難所，因爲它寧願把愛的生活當作一種娛樂，它也不得不給它一種輕鬆的方式，廉價的、安全的、確定的，如同公衆娛樂一樣。沒錯，許多年輕人都錯誤地愛着，就是說，簡單地屈從了自己而放棄了的孤獨（普通人當然總是這樣--），失敗感壓抑着他們，他們想使所處的情況變得更加生動和富有成果些，並更加私人化一些。天性告訴他們：愛的問題比其他任何問題都要重要得多，不能當衆或按這個那個協議來解決；他們是問題，從別人那兒來的親密問題，無論任何情形下都需要一種新的、特殊的、完全個人化的回答--。但是怎麼能呢，如果人們已經完全地投入進去並無法分清誰的是誰的，因此也不再擁有自己的任何東西，他們怎麼能夠找到自己身外的那條路呢，怎麼才能跳出已經埋葬的深深的孤獨呢？

他們在無助的情況下行動着，然後，如果有最好的企圖，他們就試圖逃離接近他們的世俗（比如，婚姻），他們掉進一些不明顯的機關裏，但是和致命的世俗解決之道一樣可怕。因爲然後所有圍繞他的東西都成了--世俗。無論人們是要用前衛的融合、還是混亂的交流來行動，每一種行爲都是世俗的：每一種關係都是困惑的，並導致進一步的世俗，但是通常（即在一般的非正常感知下）是這樣；甚至分居也是世俗的一步，一種非個人的、偶然的決定，沒有力量和成效。 

那些嚴肅看待愛的人將發現無論是艱難的死亡還是艱難的愛都沒有任何淨化和解決的方式，任何一點可以察覺的線索；對二者來說，這些任務，我們將之包裹起來，原封不動地傳遞過去，在此沒有可以發現的固守不變的規律。但是當我們作爲個人用同樣的方法來考驗生活的時候，這些偉大的東西將走過來和我們會合，獨自的、極其親密地會合。有種觀點認爲，愛這項艱難的工作比生活更能促使我們發展。我們，作爲初始者，和他們是不平等的。但是如果我們不斷地努力，象學徒一樣，而不是在整個輕鬆而輕佻的遊戲中丟失自己--記住在這遊戲背後人們已將人性這最神聖的東西藏了起來--那麼小小的進步和一點點的閃光或許都能夠照亮那走近我們的東西。那已經足夠了。

我們剛開始客觀地考慮一個人和另一個人的關係，不帶任何偏見，在這之前也沒有任何類似的關係可供模仿。而在這變化之中，不斷積累事物的時間已經爲我們帶來了許多東西，幫助我們度過這膽怯的實習期。女孩子和女人，在她們嶄新的、個人的花季裏，將只是男性正確或錯誤行爲的模仿者和男性職業的重複者，度過這段不確定的過渡期後，很明顯，女人將衝出那些大量和變異的僞裝（常常是荒唐的），然後她們能夠淨化自己真正的天性，洗滌另一性帶給她們的變形的影響。女人，因其生活更加舉棋不定，更加富有成果，更加自信，所以必須比那些輕鬆、悠閒的男人更加成熟和更加具有人性，而那些男人，從不深入生活的內部，認真看待身體的收穫，他們傲慢、匆忙、自以爲是地認爲自己在愛着。女人的人性，帶着其子宮所忍受的痛苦和恥辱，將在外部世界的改革中剝去約束女人的習俗之後呈現出來，而那些從沒有感覺到這些的男人將爲之震驚。終有一天（甚至現在，特別是在北歐的國家，可信賴的嘆息已經在閃出萌芽之光），終有一天女孩子們和女人們的名字將不再意味着僅是男性的對立面，將有一些什麼在其自身裏邊存在，那些讓人認爲不再是任何補充和限制的東西，而是生活和現實：女性的人類。這個進步（首先遭到了落後的男性的極端反對）將轉變愛的經驗，而這經驗裏充滿了錯誤，它將被徹底改變並重塑成一種意味着平等的人類關係，而不再是從男人流向女人的愛。而這種更加人性化的愛（將隨着無限的深思熟慮和溫柔，還有束縛和解放之後的善良和清明得到完善）將類似我們今天痛苦地準備着的，有一番偉大的鬥爭：這愛包括：兩個孤獨的人互相保護、界野分明並向彼此問候。

還有，不要認爲愛是想當然的，當您還是個男孩子的時候，您已經丟失了它；您怎麼就知道那時那巨大而慷慨的愛不曾落實到您身上，您依此而生存至今呢？我相信那愛仍舊在那兒，它在您的記憶裏是那麼強烈而熱情，因爲它是您第一次深深的孤獨和第一次內在世界作用於您的生命。--用我所有的美好希望祝福您，親愛的開普斯先生！

 您的，

 瑞那.瑪里亞.李爾克

羅馬1904年5月14日