LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET

for themselves and yet hand it on like a sealed letter, without
knowing it. And do not be confused by the multiplicity of
names and the complexity of instances. Perhaps there is over
everything a great motherhood, as a common longing. The
loveliness of the virgin, a being that (as you so beautifully say)
“has not yet accomplished anything”, is motherhood fore-
boding and preparing itself, uncasy and yearning. And the
mother’s beauty is serving motherhood, and in the old woman
there is a great memory. And in the man too there is mother-
hood, it seems to me, physical and spiritual ; his begetting is also
a kind of birth-giving, and it is birth-giving when he creates
out of his innermost fullness. And perhaps the sexes are more
akin than we suppose, and the great renewal of the world will
perhaps consist in this, that man and maiden, freed from all false
feelings and perversions, will seek cach other not as opposites
but as brother and sister, as neighbours, and will unite as human
beings to bear in common, simply, seriously and patiently, the
heavy sex that has been laid upon them.

But everything that once perhaps will be possible to many,
the solitary man can already prepare for and build now with his
hands, which go less astray. Therefore, dear Sir, love your
solitude 12 and bear the pain which it has caused you with fair-
sounding lament; For those that are near you are far, you say, |
and this shews that distance begins to grow round you. And
when your nearness is far, then your distance is already among
the stars and very great; be glad of your growing, into which
you can take no one else with you, and be good to those that
remain behind, and be self-possessed and quiet with them and
do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten
them with your confidence or joy, which they could not com-
prehend. Seck some unpretending and honest communion with
them, which you are under no necessity to alter when you
yourself become more and more different ; love life in a strange
guise in them, and make allowance for those ageing people who
fear the solitude in which you trust. Avoid furnishing material

23