my fave Rilke stanza is from the duino Elegies - perhaps it is activity
theory
From the first Elegy
Yes - the springtimes needed you.
Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it.
A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you
walked
under an open window, a violin
yeilded itself to your hearing. All this
was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't
you always
distracted by expectation, as if every
event
aanounced a beloved? (Where can you
find a place
to keeep her, with all the huge strange
thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying
all night.)
******
>At 08:30 PM 8/15/00 -0700, you wrote:
>>Rilke anyone?
>>mike
>
>In response to Mike's request:
>
>For all of you tearing your hair out over Yeats, units of analysis, etc.
>here is what Rilke would tell you, although I'm not sure he had enough of a
>sense of humor to apply it to this situation:
>
>"I beg you..to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and
>try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books
>written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which
>could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.
>And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then,
>someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it,
>live your way into the answer."
>
>_Letters to a Young Poet_ . Probably a tad out of context, but still still
>as apropos as ever! Although I am having trouble seeing how to *live*
>questions such as "What is a unit of analysis?". I'm sure it can be done.
>If you are one who understands how it can be done, just remember that Rilke
>*also* said:
>
>"Rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you,
>and be kind to those who remain behind..."
>
>Elizabeth
>
>Elizabeth A. Wardle
>Rhetoric & Professional Communication Program
>Department of English
>Iowa State University of Science and Technology
>ewardle@iastate.edu
>www.public.iastate.edu/~ewardle/
>
>"Even if you are unable to equal the qualifications of great men, do not
>find reasons to live with the mediocrity within yourself."
> ~Baltasar Gracian, 1601-1658
___________________________________________________________________________
Kathryn Alexander, kalexand@sfu.ca
Doctoral Candidate, Faculty of Education,
Simon Fraser University,
Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6
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