英語美文欣賞 （給一位青年詩人的信）
英語作爲學習生涯中必不可少的課程，想學好真的不容易。小編在此獻上英語美文，希望大家喜歡。
英文美文欣賞
給一位青年詩人的信(1)Letters to a Young Poet(1)
It's a book you'll read countless times and each time will seem like the first time.
Letters To A Young Poet are ten letters written to a young man about to enter the German military. His name was Franz Kappus, he was 19 years old, and he wrote Rilke looking for guidance and a critique of some of his poems. Rilke was himself only 27 when the first letter was written. The resulting five year correspondence is a virtual owner's manual on what it is (and what is required) to be an artist and a person.
Letter One
Paris
February 17, 1903
Dear Sir,
Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
With this note as a preface, may I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own, although they do have silent and hidden beginnings of something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem, "My Soul." There, some thing of your own is trying to become word and melody. And in the lovely poem "To Leopardi" a kind of kinship with that great, solitary figure does perhaps appear. Nevertheless, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, not yet any thing independent, even the last one and the one to Leopardi. Your kind letter, which accompanied them managed to make clear to me various faults that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically.
You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life,even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sound - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. And if out of , this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.
But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self searching that I ask of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.
What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.
It was a pleasure for me to find in your letter the name of Professor Horacek; I have great reverence for that kind, learned man, and a gratitude that has lasted through the years. Will you please tell him how I feel; it is very good of him to still think of me, and I appreciate it.
The poem that you entrusted me with, I am sending back to you. And I thank you once more for your questions and sincere trust, of which, by answering as honestly as I can, I have tried to make myself a little worthier than I, as a stranger, really am.
Yours very truly,
Rainer Maria Rilke
親愛的先生：
您的信在幾天前就到了這裏。我想說謝謝您對我的極大信任。我所能說的就是這些了。我不能討論您的詩;任何評論對我來說都是陌生的。那些評論根本不瞭解藝術作品：它們總是導致或多或少的誤解。事情並不象人們試圖讓我們相信的那樣總是可以觸摸和說出來的;大多數經驗只能意會，不能言傳。而且最難以說得清的就是藝術作品，那些神祕的存在，那些在我們渺小而短暫的生活旁邊悄悄地滑過的生命。
以此做前言，或許我可以告訴您，您的詩歌沒有自身的風格，雖然有些沉默和隱晦的開頭的確有些意思。在最後一首詩裏我的感覺得到了證實："我的靈魂"。在您的詩裏，您試圖用文字和韻律來表達自己。在一首做"致里奧帕迪"的可愛的詩裏，一種和那偉大而寂寞的人物相連的關係的確產生了。但是，詩本身卻什麼都不是，也不是獨立的任何東西，包括最後一首和那首"致里奧帕迪"。您的信設法讓我澄清了自己在讀您的詩時產生的各種誤解，儘管我無法說出那是什麼。 您在問您的詩如何?您問我。您已經問過別人了。您送它們到雜誌社。您把它們和別人的詩相比較。當某些編輯拒絕了您的作品時您感到沮喪。現在(因爲您說過您想要我的意見)我請求您停止做所有這類事情。您在往外部世界看，而這正是您應該馬上停止做的事情。沒有人能夠給您建議或幫助您--沒有人。只有一件事情您可以做，深入自己的內在世界，找找促使您寫作的動因，看看它是否深植在您的心靈裏;問自己，如果您被禁止寫作您是否會死去。就是這些。在靜默的時候問您自己：我必須寫嗎?讓您的靈魂給您深刻的回答吧。如果答案是肯定的，如果您給這個神聖的問題的答案是，"是的，我必須"，那麼就把您的生活建立在這種必要上吧;您整個的生活，即使最自卑和淡漠的時光，都必須成爲這一本能的記號和見證，然後您就接近了本性。然後，就象前無古人那樣，試着去說您見到的、感覺到的、您愛的和您失去的。不要寫愛情詩;避免那些太輕而易舉和普通的格式;它們是最難寫的，需要一種偉大的足夠成熟的力量才能創造出那些個性化的東西，然而在我們之前已經有太多好的甚至是絕妙的作品在那裏了。所以，把自己從這些通常的主題中救贖出來，寫日常生活賦予您的;描寫您的悲哀和希望，那些流過您頭腦的思想和您對某種美的信念--描寫所有這些心靈能夠觸摸到的、沉默的、謙卑的、忠誠的東西，還有當您在表達自己時，使用身旁的東西，用您夢裏的意象和您記得的事物。如果您的日常生活很貧乏，不要埋怨生活，怨您自己吧;承認自己不夠做一個詩人來喚醒生活的貧乏;因爲對創作者來說沒有貧窮，沒有貧窮和冷漠的環境。甚至當您發現自己是在監獄裏，牆壁擋住了外部世界的聲音--您不是還有自己的童年時代嗎?那是無價之寶，那是記憶之門。把您的注意力轉向它。試着將沉睡的往日之感覺拉起來，您的個性將不斷成長，您的孤獨將擴張成爲一個您可以在午夜停留的地方，那時，所有的噪噪音都消失、遠去了。--如果您掉轉身--在您的內在世界，在您自己的世界的洗禮中，詩就出現了。但您將不會想到去問它們是好還是不好，也將不會想到用它們去吸引雜誌：因爲您只看到它們是您的本性的一部分，您的生活片段和生活之聲。如果藝術作品是發自必要，那就是好的。這是我們判斷它的唯一方法。所以，親愛的先生，除此之外我不能給您任何建議：走進自己的心裏，看一看您的生活之流流過的地方有多深;在它的源泉處您定將找到是否需要創作這個問題的答案。接受這個答案，當它是白給您的，不要試圖打斷它。或許，您將發現，您的答案要您做個藝術家。那麼接受這個使命，忍受它，它的負擔和偉大，不要問隨之而來的外部獎勵。因爲創作者必須是自己的世界，必須找到自己的全部和本性，對他來說整個的生命就是奉獻。 之後您要讓自己沉靜下來，深入自己的孤獨，或許您將不得不再次聲明要成爲一個詩人(如果，如我所說的，一個人感覺自己沒有寫作也可以照樣生活，那麼不要再寫了吧)。而且，即便如此，這種我跟您說的自我探察也並不是說再無意義了。您的生活將仍舊循着自己的道路往前走，它們或許會是美好的、豐富的、廣闊的，就如我對您的希望一樣。
我還能對您說些什麼呢?對我來說似乎每件事情都有自己的側重點;最後我想要加上一條建議：保持成長、沉默和渴望的狀態，經其一生;您不能用通過往外看和等待外部的答案等任何粗暴的形式打斷它，只有在您的內心深處，在您沉默的時光裏答案或能出現。
在您的信裏看到侯拉塞克教授的名字真讓我感到高興;我從這位慈祥的飽學之士身上獲益非淺，多年以來我一直保持着對他的尊敬。請您轉告他，謝謝他還記得我，我很感激。
您託於我的詩我將寄回給您。再次感謝您提出的問題和您對我的信任，對此，我也儘可能誠實地做了回答，我試着使自己比本來的我，那個陌生人，更有價值一點，真是這樣。
您誠摯的，
瑞那.瑪里亞.李爾克於巴黎
1903年2月17日
經典英語美文
給一位青年詩人的信 (2)Letters to a Young Poet(2)
Letter Two
Viareggio, near Pisa (Italy)
April 5, 1903
You must pardon me, dear Sir, for waiting until today to gratefully remember your letter of February 24. I have been unwell all this time, not really sick, but oppressed by an influenza-like debility, which has made me incapable of doing anything. And finally, since it just didn't want to improve I came to this southern sea, whose beneficence helped me once before. But I am still not well, writing is difficult, and so you must accept these few lines instead of the letter I would have liked to send.
Of course, you must know that every letter of yours will always give me pleasure, and you must be indulgent with the answer, which will perhaps often leave you empty-handed; for ultimately, and precisely in the deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably alone; and many things must happen, many things must go right, a whole constellation of events must be fulfilled, for one human being to successfully advise or help another.
Today I would like to tell you just two more things:
Irony: Don't let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of fife. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn't be ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it becomes small and helpless. Search into the depths of Things: there, irony never descends and when you arrive at the edge of greatness, find out whether this way of perceiving the world arises from a necessity of your being. For under the influence of serious Things it will either fall away from you (if it is something accidental), or else (if it is really innate and belongs to you) it will grow strong, and become a serious tool and take its place among the instruments which you can form your art with.
And the second thing I want to tell you today is this:Of all my books, I find only a few indispensable, and two of them are always with me, wherever I am. They are here, by my side: the Bible, and the books of the great Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen. Do you know his works? It is easy to find them, since some have been published in Recalm's Universal Library, in a very good translation. Get the little volume of Six Stories by J.P. Jacobsen and his novel Niels Lyhne, and begin with the first story in the for mer, which is cared "Mogens." A whole world will envelop you, the happiness, the abundance, inconceivable vastness of a world. Live for a while in these books, learn from them what you feel is worth learning, but most of &U love them. This love will be returned to you thousands upon thousands of times, whatever your life may become - it will, I am sure, go through the whole fabric of your being, as one of the most important threads among all the threads of your experiences, disappointments, and joys.
If I were to say who has given me the greatest experience of the essence of creativity, its depths and eternity, there are just two names would mention: Jacobsen, that great, great poet, and Auguste Rodin, the sculptor, who is without peer among all artists who are alive today.
And all success upon your path!
Yours,
Rainer Maria Rilke
第二封
您必須原諒我，親愛的先生，原諒我到了今天才想起回覆您2月24日的來信：我的身體在這段時間裏一直不好，並不是真的病了，而是被一種象流行感冒一樣的虛弱壓迫着，使我無法做任何事情。最後，因爲不見好轉，我就到了南部的這個海邊，我的身體曾在這兒得以康復，但這次仍不見好，寫作變得艱難，所以您本應見到的長信就成了現在的幾行字。
當然，您一定知道您的每一封信都給我帶來了快樂;對我的答覆，請您給以寬容，它們經常令您兩手空空;其實按照絕對的說法，在那些最深刻和重大的事情上，不用說，我們都是獨自一個人完成的;一定有許多事情發生，一定有許多事情必須做得對，對那些希望成功地給別人建議或幫助的人來說，得做完一連串光彩的情。
今天我想和您說兩件事：
諷刺：不要讓自己受控於它，特別是在沒有創作力的時候。當您充滿了創作力，就試着使用它，作爲一種抓取生活的方式。使用時要純粹。它本是很純粹的，沒有必要爲它感到害羞;但是如果您感到自己用得太濫了，如果您擔心它將到處氾濫，就轉向偉大而嚴肅的主題，在它們面前它會變得渺小而無能爲力。深入這些東西，諷刺在那兒將不再卑躬屈膝--而且當您到了偉大的臨界的時候，您將發現這是您必須使用的一種透視世界的方式。在嚴肅題材的影響下，諷刺或許將遠離您(如果是偶然的話)，或許在另外的情況下(如果它是您內在的反映)，它將變得強壯起來，並且成爲一個嚴肅的工具，成爲您的一部分藝術手段。
想要和您說的第二件事是：
我發現在我所有的書裏只有一小部分是不可缺少的，其中兩本永遠伴隨我，無論我在哪裏。現在它們也在我的身邊：《聖經》和偉大的丹麥詩人傑克布森的書。您知道他的作品嗎?很容易找到，裏卡爾姆的大學圖書館裏就有，翻譯得很好。買一本J.P.傑克布森寫的含有六個小說的書和他的小說《尼爾斯.林妮》去讀吧，從前邊提到的第一個故事開始讀，那故事的名字叫"摩根一家"(MOGENS)。一個完整的世界將包裹着您，快樂、充實、難以置信的博大的世界。在這些書中呆一段時間，學習那些您認爲是值得學習的。大多數人都熱愛它們。這種愛將無數次地在您的生活中迴盪--它將，我確信，穿透您的每根纖維，成爲那些構成您的經驗--失望和快樂--的重要纖維中之最緊要的那根。 如果要我說是誰給了我對創作力的精髓、深度和永恆的體驗，我就只想提兩個名字;傑克布森，那個真正偉大的詩人，和奧古斯丁.羅丹，那個當今世上無人能和他匹敵雕刻家。
再就是，讓我祝願您滿載而歸吧!
您的，
瑞那.瑪里亞.李爾克
意大利的比薩附近
1903年4月5日
英語美文欣賞
致一位青年詩人的信Letters to a Young Poet(3)
Viareggio, near Pisa (Italy)
April 23, 1903
You gave me much pleasure, dear Sir, with your Easter letter; for it brought much good news of you, and the way you spoke about Jacobsen's great and beloved art showed me that I was not wrong to guide your fife and its many questions to this abundance.
Now Niels Lyhne will open to you, a book of splendors and depths; the more often one reads it, the more everything seems to be contained within it, from life's most imperceptible fragrances to the full, enormous taste of its heaviest fruits. In it there is nothing that does not seem to have been understood, held, lived, and known in memory's wavering echo; no experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others. You will experience the great happiness of reading this book for the first time, and will move through its numberless surprises as if you were in a new I can tell you that even later on one moves through these books, again and again, with the same astonishment and that they lose none of their wonderful power and relinquish none of the overwhelming enchantment that they had the first time one read them.
One just comes to enjoy them more and more, becomes more and more grateful, and somehow better and simpler in one's vision, deeper in one's faith in life, happier and greater in the way one lives.
And later on, you will have to read the wonderful book of the fate and yearning of Marie Grubbe, and Jacobsen's letters and journals and fragments, and finally his verses which (even if they are just moderately well translated) live in infinite sound. (For this reason I would advise you to buy, when you can, the lovely Complete Edition of Jacobsen's works, which contains all of these. It is in three volumes, well translated, published by Eugen Diederichs in Leipzig, and costs, I think, only five or six marks per volume.)
In your opinion of "Roses should have been here . . ." (that work of such incomparable delicacy and form) you are of course quite, quite incontestably right, as against the man who wrote the introduction. But let me make this request right away: Read as little as possible of literary criticism. Such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are clever word-games, in which one view wins , and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them. Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentation, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.
In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!
Richard Dehmel: My experience with his books (and also, incidentally, with the man, whom I know slightly) is that whenever I have discovered one of his beautiful pages, I am. always afraid that the next one will destroy the whole effect and change what is admirable into something unworthy. You have characterized him quite well with the phrase: "living and writing in heat." And in fact the artist's experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, to its pain and its pleasure, that the two phenomena are really just different forms of one and the same longing and bliss. And if instead of "heat" one could say "sex";- sex in the great, pure sense of the word, free of any sin attached to it by the Church, - then his art would be very great and infinitely important. His poetic power is great and as strong as a primal instinct; it has its own relentless rhythms in itself and explodes from him like a volcano.
But this power does not always seem completely straightforward and without pose. (But that is one of the most difficult tests for the creator: he must always remain unconscious, unaware of his best virtues, if he doesn't want to rob them of their candor and innocence!) And then, when, thundering through his being, it arrives at the sexual, it finds someone who is not so pure as it needs him to be. Instead of a completely ripe and pure world of sexuality, it finds a. world that is not human enough, that is only male, is heat, thunder, and restlessness, and burdened with the old prejudice and arrogance with which the male has always disfigured and burdened love. Because he loves only as a male, and not as a human being, there is something narrow in his sexual feeling, something that seems wild, malicious, time-bound, uneternal, which diminishes his art and makes it ambiguous and doubtful. It is not immaculate, it is marked by time and by passion, and little of it will endure. (But most art is like that!) Even so, one can deeply enjoy what is great in it, only one must not get lost in it and become a hanger-on of Dehmel's world, which is so infinitely afraid, filled with adultery and confusion, and is far from the real fates, which make one suffer more than these time-bound afflictions do, but also give one more opportunity for greatness and more courage for eternity.
Finally, as to my own books, I wish I could send you any of them that might give you pleasure. But I am very poor, and my books, as soon as they are published, no longer belong to me. I can’t even afford them myself and, as I would so often like to, give them to those who would be kind to them.
So I am writing for you, on another slip of paper, the titles (and publishers) of my most recent books (the newest ones - all together I published perhaps 12 or 13), and must leave to you, dear Sir, to order one or two of them when you can.
I am glad that my books will be in your hands.
With best wishes,
Yours,
Rainer Maria Rilke
親愛的先生：
您復活節的來信給我帶來了許多快樂，它帶來了您的不少好消息，還有您談論傑克布森的偉大和受人愛戴的藝術時的方式。您讓我覺得自己在指導您的生活和幫助您解決生活裏的許多問題時沒有出錯。
現在，《尼爾斯.林妮》將展開在您面前，一本傑出的、內涵豐富的書;讀的次數越多，您越會發現它包容萬象，從體味最無法理解的生活的芬芳到品嚐其豐碩飽滿的果實。在它裏面沒有什麼是不可以在迴盪的記憶濤聲中得到理解、把握、存活和感知的;沒有什麼經驗不是重要的，最微小的事件就象命運本身一樣，將漸漸展露開來，而命運自己就象一個奇妙的寬闊的纖維，組成它的每根絲都被一隻無限的、溫柔的手牽引着，這絲和其它的絲一起並排着，並由幾百根其它的絲把握和支撐着。剛讀這書的時候，您就能感到巨大的喜悅，書中無數令您驚異的地方使您感覺置身於一個新的夢裏。但是我告訴您真正奇妙的事吧：即使以後您再翻開這些書，一遍又一遍地，您仍會帶着和初次讀它時一樣的驚奇，它不會喪失那神奇的力量，也不會散失一點讓人無法抵抗的魅力。
您會越來越快樂，越來越感激，在意念裏會莫名其妙地變得更好、更簡單，而生活的信念會更深刻，生活的方式會更快樂和更親密。
之後，您將不得不讀這本描寫瑪利亞.閣魯彼的命運和期望的奇書，還有傑克布森的信和日記及未完成的作品，當然最後是他的詩(即使譯文一般)，那詩讀後餘音嫋嫋。(爲此，我建議您在手頭不緊張的時候去買來，一套很棒的傑克布森作品全集包括上述所有的內容，共三本，譯得很好，由利浦茲的尤根-埃得瑞契出版社出版，還有價格，我想，每本只有5到6馬克吧。) 您對"玫瑰早就該在這兒……"(作品具有如此獨一無二的優美和形式)的建議當然是對極了，無可爭議，您的見解幾乎和寫了詩文介紹的那人一樣。但是請允許我在此提個要求：儘可能地少讀文學評論--這種東西不是一些混亂的沒有意義的偏見，就是一些聰明的文字遊戲，今天捧場，明天棒殺。藝術作品是一種無止境的孤獨，對它來說，任何評論都無足輕重。只有愛才能觸及和把握他們，纔對它們公平。信任您自己和您自己的感覺吧，如同您反對爭論、探討或這類的介紹一樣;如果您的感覺錯了，那麼您內在的自然成長會繼續指引您找到真知卓見。允許您的判斷沉默地、不受打擾地成長吧。這個過程，就象所有的過程一樣，必須發自內心，是不能強迫和匆忙的。每一樣東西都必須在妊娠之後才能誕生。讓每一個感想每一種感覺的胚胎自然生長，在黑暗之中，在無法言喻、無意識的、難以理解的地方，帶着淳樸的人性和耐心等候那一時刻的來臨。一個新的明確的概念將產生。而這種孤獨就是一個藝術家的生活，總在理解和創造中。
對此，沒有時間可以用來衡量。一年不算什麼，十年也不算什麼。做一名藝術家就意味着不要計數和計算，只象一棵樹一樣等待成熟。樹不會強迫自己流出汁液，它自信地站在春天的暴風雨裏，不擔心隨後的夏天是否會來臨，而夏天終究會來臨的。但它只向那些耐心的人走來，向那些似乎永恆地在前邊等待的人，它既冷冷地又熾烈地。在我的生活中，我每一天都能感受到它，帶着痛感受着它，我爲此感到喜悅：耐心就是一切!
裏查德.德梅爾：我讀過他的書(也是偶然的。對這個人，我所知甚少)，每次讀到他書裏的優美篇章時，我忍不住就擔心下一頁文字會破壞已有的氣氛，或讓那些令人仰慕的東西變得一錢不值。您對他的個性總結得非常好："在激情裏活着和寫作。"--事實上這個藝術家的經驗幾乎是基於性、性的痛苦和歡樂這兩種經驗之上，這兩種經驗形式不同，實際上是一種東西，都有着熱望和極樂。
如果人們可以用"性"來替換"熱情"--性是偉大純潔的感知，同教堂相連的時候沒有一點罪惡--他的藝術將是極其偉大和無比重要的。他的詩的力量是偉大的，象本能一樣強烈;它有自己不屈不撓的韻律，爆發時如同火山。
但這種力量並不是總能得以痛快淋漓地渲泄。(當然那也是對創作者的最艱難的考驗：他必須總是保持無意識，不能參透自己最優秀的品質，如果他不想掠奪它們的坦白和純真的話!)然後，當雷電穿過他的身體，產生性慾，它發現有些人並不如希望的那樣純潔。它沒有找到一個完整的、成熟而純潔的性的世界，反而發現一個不夠人性的，僅是男性的世界，是熱情、驚雷和焦慮，負擔着古老的偏見和傲慢，這時愛變得醜惡，變成負擔。因爲赭石的男性所愛的只是一個"男性"，而不是一個人，在他的性感覺裏有一些狹隘的東西，有一些野蠻的、不軌的、受制於時間的和非永恆的東西，那些東西貶抑了他的藝術，使其顯得曖昧可疑。它不是潔淨的，它印着時間和激情的標記，不會永恆(但大多數藝術是這樣!)。即便如此，一個人能夠深深地愉悅其中，只是不要迷失了並在德梅爾的世界裏徘徊，那個世界是深淵，充滿姦情和困惑，同真正的命運相差十萬八千里，真正的命運要比這受時間約束的激情遭受得多得多，而且在人們追求永恆時給以更多的感恩機會和勇氣。
最後是我自己的書，我希望能夠送您一些，或許這將給您帶來快樂。但是我真的很窮，而且我的書，一旦出版，就不再屬於我了。甚至我自己也買不起--，儘管我經常想要把這些作品送給喜歡它們的人。
所以我在另一張紙上給您寫下我的大多數最近出版的書名(最新的--共有12或13本吧和出版商的名稱)，親愛的先生，當您能夠買得起的時候就去買一或兩本看看吧。
我很高興自己的書將在您的手中。
最真摯的希望，
您的，
瑞那.瑪里亞.李爾克
意大利，比薩
1903年4月23日
