.jpg "Ivy covered Villa Erba Cernobbio, Como, Italy. - collection no. 09 by linenlavenderlife.com - http://www.pinterest.com/linenlavender/ll-collection-no-09/")
“Let your beauty manifest itself
without talking and calculation.
You are silent. It says for you:
I am.
And comes in meaning thousandfold,
comes at long last over everyone.”
―Rainer Maria Rilke
Niels Lyhne is an aspiring poet, torn between romanticism and realism, faith and reason. Through his relationships with six women—including his young widowed aunt, a seductive free spirit, and his passionate cousin who marries his friend—his search for purpose becomes a yielding to disillusionment. One of Danish literature’s greatest novels, with nods to Kierkegaard and a protagonist some critics have compared to Hamlet, Jacobsen’s masterpiece has at its center a young man who faces the anguish of the human condition but cannot find comfort in the Christian faith. Tiina Nunnally’s award-winning translation offers readers a chance to experience anew a writer deeply revered by Rilke, Ibsen, Mann, and Hesse. -via Amazon Penguin Classic’s version, translated by Tiina Nunnally
…Describe your sorrows and desires,
the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief
in some kind of beauty – describe all these with heartfelt, silent,
humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things
around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you
remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame
yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to
call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty
and no poor, indifferent place. -excerpt, Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer M. Rilke
