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
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