atelier of Paul Cézanne
Nature, and the things we live with and use, precede us and come after us. But they are, so long as we are here, our possession and our friendship. They know us with our needs and our pleasures, as they did those of our ancestors, whose trusted companions they were.
So it follows that all that is here is not to be despised and put down, but, precisely because it did precede us, to be taken by us with the innermost understanding that these appearances and things must be seen and transformed.
Transformed? Yes. For our task is to take this earth so deeply and wholly into ourselves that it will resurrect within our being. We are bees of the invisible. Passionately we plunder the honey of the visible in order to gather it in the great golden hive of the invisible.
Letter to Witold Hulewicz
November 13, 1925
I'm coming to think of this as more of a mutual exchange between us and what is here. I don't possess anything really, not this five acres we live on surely. We are more like its caretakers, but I honestly feel that this nature, farm, land, these trees, weeds, grasses, pond, hills, meadow, birds (especially the birds) — they are caretakers of us. And I sometimes wonder if they are being transformed by taking us in. Of course I want to be unobtrusive, but it's impossible.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the best honor I can do anything and anyone is to take it/them inside, and examine it/them so closely, that I am transformed.
What bees are extracting nectar from me, and what nourishment do they find? Knowing it is a constant and mutual exchange is important, I think, lest I consider myself in dominion.
a lifetime of awareness and work comes alive inside this: "our task is to take this earth so deeply and wholly into ourselves that it will resurrect within our being." oh yeah! steven
ReplyDeletefuck. can i say that here? i laugh. that is how rilke makes me feel and i can't tell you how unusual that is for someone of his time. usually the language is a barrier for me, dated language, but these translations at least, rise above language and then dive directly into the heart of the matter. and fuck! jezuz. (this is me.) i come away stupified that rilke pounds upon my heart, mind and soul directly. he plays my drum. jezuz. truly.
ReplyDeleteTransformed? Yes. For our task is to take this earth so deeply and wholly into ourselves that it will resurrect within our being. We are bees of the invisible. Passionately we plunder the honey of the visible in order to gather it in the great golden hive of the invisible.
i wonder if i had been taken to the church of rilke as a child who i might now be. and then i think of myself knee high with white flaxen hair on a dirt floor with the slow mechanics of a shed around me, light streaming in, me serving tea and biscuits to my stuffed animals and dandelions wilting in the blue ink bottle center table; i think of me in rubber boots with holes in the flooded field sailing blocks of wood as boats; i think of me even catching and killing fish on the oil slick tracks of cars on the road, and i think, erin, you were in the church of rilke!
xo
erin