RAINER MARIA RILKE

further than our knowledge extends and out a little over the
outworks of our surmising, perhaps we should then bear our
sorrows with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the
moments when something new, something unknown, has
entered into us; our feelings grow dumb with shy confusion,
everything in us retires, a stillness supervenes, and the new thing
that no one knows stands silent there in the midst.

I believe that almost all our sorrows are moments of tension
which we experience as paralysis, because we no longer hear our
estranged feelings living. Because we are alone with the strange
thing that has entered into us ; because for a moment everything
familiar and customary has-been taken from us; because we
stand in the middle of a crossing where we cannot remain
standing. Therefore it is, also, that the sorrow passes by us: the
new thing in us, that has been added to us, has entered into our
heart, has gone into its innermost chamber, and is no more even
there,—is already in the blood. And we do not realize what it
was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing had
happened, and yet we have been changed, as a house is changed
into which a guest has entered. We cannot say who has come,
perhaps we shall never know, but there are many indications
to suggest that the future is entering into us in this manner in
order to transform itself within us long before it happens. And
therefore it is so important to be solitary and heedful when we
are sad : because the seemingly uneventful and inflexible moment
when our future sets foot in us stands so much nearer to life
than that other noisy and fortuitous instant when it happens to
us as if from without. The more patient, quiet and open we are
in our sorrowing, the more deeply and the more unhesitatingly
will the new thing enter us, the better shall we deserve it, the
more will it be our own destiny, and when one day later it
“happens” (that is, goes forth from us to others) we shall feel
in our inmost selves that we are akin and close to it.; And that
is necessary. It is necessary—and in that direction our develop-
ment will gradually move—, that nothing alien shall befall us,

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