The Externals Are Simply So

Slowly But Surely I Have Been Soaking Rilke Up These Last Few Months: The Man, His Work And His Life. And That Is Probably The Only Right Way With Literature, With Study, With People Or With Anything Else: To Let It All Soak In, To Let It All Mature Slowly Inside You Until It Has Become A Part Of Yourself. That, Too, Is A Growing Process. Everything Is A Growing Process. And In Between, Emotions And Sensations That Strike You Like Lightning. But Still The Most Important Thing Is The Organic Process Of Growing.

I Feel Like A Small Battlefield In Which The Problems, Or Some Of The Problems, Of Our Time Are Being Fought Out. All One Can Hope To Do Is Keep Oneself Humbly Available, To Allow Oneself To Be A Battlefield. After All, The Problems Must Be Accommodated, Have Somewhere To Struggle And Come To Rest And We, Poor Little Humans, Must Put Our Inner Space At Their Service And Not Run Away.

Each Of Us Must Turn Inward And Destroy In Himself All That He Thinks He Ought To Destroy In Others.

The Fact Is I Don't Lead A Simple Enough Inner Life. I Indulge In Excesses, Bacchanalia Of The Spirit. Perhaps I Identify Too Much With Everything I Read And Study. Someone Like Dostoevsky Still Shatters Me.

Every Word Born Of An Inner Necessity - Writing Must Never Be Anything Else.