LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET

something like that which we are preparing with struggle and
toil, the love which consists in the mutual guarding, bordering
and saluting of two solitudes.

And one thing more : do not think that the great love which
was once enjoined upon you as a boy, became lost ; can you say
whether great and good wishes were not then ripening within
you, and resolutions by which you live to this day 2 I believe
that this love remains so strong and powerful in your memory
because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner work
which you did upon your life.—All good wishes for you, dear
Herr Kappus!

Yours:
RAINER MARIA RILKE.

VIII

BORGEBY GARD,?! FLADIE, SWEDEN, August 12th 1904.

I want to talk to you again for a while, dear Herr Kappus,
although I can say almost nothing that is helpful, hardly anything
profitable. You have had many great sorrows, which have passed
away. And you say that even this passing was difficult and jarring
for you. But please consider whether these great sorrows have
not rather passed through the midst of yourself : Whether much
in you has not altered, whether you have not somehow changed
in some part of your being, while you were sorrowful 2 Only
those sorrows are dangerous and bad which we carry about
among our fellows in order to drown them ; like diseases which
are superficially and foolishly treated, they only recede and break
out after a short interval all the more frightfully; and gather
themselves in our inwards, and are life, are unlived, disdained,
lost life, of which one can die. If it were possible for us to see

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