致一位青年詩人的信 Letters to a Young Poet(6)

Rome

December 23, 1903

My dear Mr. Kappus,

I don't want you to be without a greeting from me when Christmas comes and when you, in the midst of the holiday, are bearing your solitude more heavily than usual. But when you notice that it is vast, you should be happy; for what (you should ask yourself) would a solitude be that was not vast; there is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along, the most unworthy. But perhaps these are the very hours during which solitude grows; for its growing is painful as the growing of boys and sad as the beginning of spring. But that must not confuse you. What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't understand a thing about what they were doing.

And when you realize that their activities are shabby, that their vocations are petrified and no longer connected with life, why not then continue to look upon it all as a child would, as if you were looking at something unfamiliar, out of the depths of your own world, from the vastness of your own solitude, which is itself work and status and vocation? Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.

Think, dear Sir, of the world that you carry inside you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it, and not lose too much time or too much courage in clarifying your attitude toward people. Who says that you have any attitude at all? l know, your profession is hard and full of things that contradict you, and I foresaw your lament and knew that it would come. Now that it has come, there is nothing I can say to reassure you, I can only suggest that perhaps all professions are like that, filled with demands, filled with hostility toward the individual, saturated as it were with the hatred of those who find themselves mute and sullen in an insipid duty. The situation you must live in now is not more heavily burdened with conventions, prejudices, and false ideas than all the other situations, and if there are some that pretend to offer a greater freedom, there is nevertheless none that is, in itself, vast and spacious and connected to the important Things that the truest kind of life consists of. Only the individual who is solitary is placed under the deepest laws like a Thing, and when he walks out into the rising dawn or looks out into the event-filled evening and when he feels what is happening there, all situations drop from him as if from a dead man, though he stands in the midst of pure life. What you, dear Mr. Kappus, now have to experience as an officer, you would have felt in just the same way in any of the established professions; yes, even if, outside any position, you had simply tried to find some easy and independent contact with society, this feeling of being hemmed in would not have been spared you. It is like this everywhere; but that is no cause for anxiety or sadness; if there is nothing you can share with other people, try to be close to Things; they will not abandon you; and the nights are still there, and the winds that move through the trees and across many lands; everything in the world of Things and animals is still filled with happening, which you can take part in; and children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children, and the grownups are nothing, and their dignity has no value.

And if it frightens and torments you to think of childhood and of the simplicity and silence that accompanies it, because you can no longer believe in God, who appears in it everywhere, then ask yourself, dear Mr. Kappus, whether you have really lost God. Isn't it much truer to say that you have never yet possessed him? For when could that have been? Do you think that a child can hold him, him whom grown men bear only with great effort and whose weight crushes the old? Do you suppose that someone who really has him could lose him like a little stone? Or don't you think that someone who once had him could only be lost by him? But if you realize that he did not exist in your childhood, and did not exist previously, if you suspect that Christ was deluded by his yearning and Muhammad deceived by his pride - and if you are terrified to feel that even now he does not exist, even at this moment when we are talking about him - what justifies you then, if he never existed, in missing him like someone who has passed away and in searching for him as though he were lost?

Why don't you think of him as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity, the one who will someday arrive, the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are? What keeps you from projecting his birth into the ages that are coming into existence, and living your life as a painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy? Don't you see how everything that happens is again and again a beginning, and couldn't it be His beginning, since, in itself, starting is always so beautiful? If he is the most perfect one, must not what is less perfect precede him, so that he can choose himself out of fullness and superabundance? Must he not be the last one, so that he can include everything in himself, and what meaning would we have if he whom we are longing for has already existed?

As bees gather honey, so we collect what is sweetest out of all things and build Him. Even with the trivial, with the insignificant (as long as it is done out of love) we begin, with work and with the repose that comes afterward, with a silence or with a small solitary joy, with everything that we do alone, without anyone to join or help us, we start Him whom we will not live to see, just as our ancestors could not live to see us. And yet they, who passed away long ago, still exist in us, as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood, and as gesture that rises up from the depths of time.

Is there anything that can deprive you of the hope that in this way you will someday exist in Him, who is the farthest, the outermost limit?

Dear Mr. Kappus, celebrate Christmas in this devout feeling, that perhaps He needs this very anguish of yours in order to begin; these very days of your transition are perhaps the time when everything in you is working at Him, as you once worked at Him in your childhood, breathlessly. Be patient and without bitterness, and realize that the least we can do is to make coming into existence no more difficult for Him than the earth does for spring when it wants to come.

And be glad and confident.

Yours,

Rainer Maria Rilke

我親愛的Kappus先生：

我不希望您在耶酥受難節來臨的時候裏沒有一絲我的問候，而您在這節日裏，正忍受着比往日更加沉重的孤獨。但是當您注意到這孤獨的巨大時，您應該感到快樂；是什麼（您應該問您自己）能使孤獨不那麼巨大呢？只有一種孤獨及其巨大、沉重和艱難是不能忍受的，幾乎每個人都樂意以它去換取任何一種形式的社交生活，不管它有多麼無聊或空虛；讓那第一個來的人把渺小的外部世界給您，這最沒有價值的……但是或許正是這些時光令孤獨成長；它的成長正如男孩子們的成長一樣痛苦，如春天的開始一樣悲哀。

但是請不要爲這些所迷惑。實際上真正必要的卻是：孤獨，巨大的內在孤獨。走進您自己的心靈深處，獨處幾個小時--那時您一定有能力獲得的。讓自己孤獨着，一如您童年的時候，那時成人們走來走去地忙着那些看起來很偉大很重要的事情，雖然他們對自己正忙着的事情並不真正理解。

當您認識到他們的活動是淺薄的時候，他們的職業已經僵化，不再和生活相關，而您也不再象兒時一樣懷着崇敬的心情看待他們了，似乎您正在看着一些陌生的東西，它們遠離您自己的世界，您感到了自己巨大的孤獨，孤獨的狀態，還有淺薄？您想要放棄兒時用以抵抗和蔑視的智慧，爲什麼？原來無法溝通是一種走向孤獨的途徑，而抵抗和蔑視是參與的一部分，通過這些方式，您想要把自己隔絕開來。

想吧，親愛的先生，想那在支持着您的內在世界，隨便您將這種思想喚做什麼：對自己童年的記憶，或對自己未來的嚮往--只要注意到您內在產生的東西就可以了，並把它置於您洞察到的一切事物之上。在您身體內發生的一切值得您付出全部的愛；有時您必須找到一種認識它的方法，而且在澄清您對人們的態度時不能丟失太多的時間或太多的勇氣。是誰在說您有脾氣？--我知道了，您的職業很難，許多東西在和您相牴觸，我預見到您的悲傷並知道它將來臨。現在它來了，我無法說些什麼讓您安心，或許只能這樣勸您：所有的職業都是這樣，充滿了要求，充滿了對個性的仇視，充滿了那些發現自己不得不做平淡的工作而心懷惱怒的不平的人。您現在所處的情形是不要太受習俗、偏見和錯誤思想的束縛，如果有什麼阻止您追求更大的自由，那些都是無關緊要的，就其本身而言沒有一個是和組成最真實生活的重要事情有關。只有孤獨的人被置於最深刻的律例之下，好比事物，當他走入正在曙光裏或者望着活躍的夜晚的時候，當他感到有什麼將要發生，但所有的事情都拋棄了他，好象離開一個死人，儘管他站在純淨的生活中間。

至於您，親愛的開普斯先生，您現在所經歷的就是不得不做一個公務員，您對它的感覺就象您在別的已有的職業裏感到的一樣；是的，拋開所有的情形不談，如果您僅僅是討厭去尋找和社會接觸的簡單而獨立的方法，您也不會感受到那種被鑲了邊的感覺--這感覺到處都是；但是那並不是給焦急或悲哀尋找藉口；如果您和別人沒有什麼可以分享的，試着和事物接近吧；他們不會拋棄您；夜晚會仍在那兒，風穿過樹林和許多田地；這世界上的東西和動物的每一樣都充滿了巧合，而您可以參與進去；孩子們還是和您兒時一樣是孩子，悲哀和快樂也沒有什麼不同--如果您想到了您的童年，您再次生活在童年，在孤獨的孩子們中間，成年人什麼也不是了，他們的尊嚴毫無價值。如果您在回想童年和率直天真的時候感到害怕和痛苦，並伴隨着沉默，那是因爲您無法再相信上帝，而他無處不在，然後您問自己，親愛的開普斯先生，是否您真地丟失了上帝。當您說您從未擁有過他的時候是否這是真的？那是什麼時候發生的事？您認爲孩子能抓住他，成年人只有巨大的努力才能忍受他嗎？還有，誰的重量粉碎了老年人？您認爲真的擁有他的人會象丟掉一塊石頭一樣地丟失他嗎？或者您認爲曾經擁有他的人會被他拋棄？--但是如果您認識到他在您的童年時不存在，在早先的時候不存在，如果您設想耶酥被他的渴望所盅惑而穆罕默德被他的驕傲所欺騙--如果是害怕因爲至今您還沒有感到他的存在，即使在我們現在談起他的時刻--那麼如果他根本不存在，什麼能向您證明呢，是象錯過了那些路過您身旁的其他人一樣錯過他，還是到處找尋他？

爲什麼您不認爲他就要到來，他從永恆中向我們接近，總有一天他會到來，他是這棵樹上的真正的果實，而我們是那樹的葉子。是什麼阻止您相信他真正誕生過呢？是什麼阻止您相信您的生命是建立在一次痛苦、美麗而偉大的妊娠之上呢？不要以爲每一件事情的發生都是一次一次的開始的重複，那不是他的開始，因爲，就其本身來說，難道開始總是如此美麗的嗎？如果他是最完美的一個，那比他遜色的一定不會在他之前產生，而使他能選擇將自己的命運放在充實和富足之外--他一定不是最後一個，所以他能把所有的事情包容起來，如果我們期望的他已經存在了，這對我們又意味着什麼呢？

如同蜜蜂收集花粉，我們也累積事物的美好一面並設計它。即使我們開始的時候微不足道（只要做的時候是出於愛），隨着後來的工作和休息，隨着寂靜或一點孤獨的快樂，隨着我們獨自完成的每一件事情，做的時候沒有任何人蔘與和幫助，我們開始的時候是不會看到他的存在的，如同我們的祖先無法活着看到我們。他們，儘管很久以前就去世了，但是仍舊活在我們心中，如同先天性的，如同重擔一樣壓在我們的命運之上，如緩緩流動的血液和從遙遠的時光中打來的招呼。要是有一天您認爲他曾經存在過，會有什麼東西剝奪您的希望嗎？那遙無邊際的限制又是什麼呢？

親愛的開普斯先生，用這種虔誠的感情來慶祝耶酥吧，或許他需要您的這種極端苦悶的感覺來促成這個開始；您的這些過渡時光或許就是爲他的到來做着準備，如同您童年時候秉住呼吸等候他。耐心些，堅強些，並瞭解：我們現在所做的，就象土地爲春天的到來所做的一樣。

祝快樂和自信。

您的，

瑞那.瑪里亞.李爾克

羅馬1903年12月23