LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET

notice that it is great, be glad of that; for what (you must ask
yourself) would solitude be that had not greatness ; there is only
one solitude, and it is great and is not easy to bear, and to almost
everyone there come hours when they would gladly exchange
it for some kind of communion, however banal and cheap, for
the appearance of some slight harmony with the most easily
available, with the most undeserving. . . . But perhaps those are
just the hours when solitude grows; for its growing is painful
like the growing of boys and sad like the beginning of Spring.
But that must not mislead you. What is needed is, in the end,
simply this: solitude, great inner solitude. Going into yourself
and meeting no one for hours on end,—that is what you must
be able to attain. To be alone, as you were alone in childhood,
when the grown-ups were going about, involved with things
which seemed important and great, because the great ones looked
s0 busy and because you grasped nothing of their business.

And when one day you perceive that their pursuits are paltry,
their professions torpid and no longer connected with life, why
not proceed like a child to look upon them as something alien,
from out of the depth of your own world, out of the spacious-
ness of your own solitude, which is itself work and status and
profession : Why want to exchange a child’s wise non-under-
standing for defensiveness and disdain, when surely non-
understanding is aloneness, but defensiveness and disdain are
participation in what you want by these means to avoid.

Think, dear Sir, of the world which you carry within yourself,
and call this thinking what you like ; let it be memory of your
own childhood or longing for your own future,—only pay
attention to what arises within you, and set it above everything
that you notice about you. Your inmost happening is worth
your whole love, that is what you must somehow work at,
and not lose too much time and too much courage in explaining
your attitude to people. Who tells you, anyhow, that you have
such a thing at all :—I know your profession is hard and filled
with' contradiction of yourself, and I anticipated your lament

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