Rilke on Love

We may have suspected it, though it may never have been shown to us as clearly, that the essence of love does not consist in togetherness but in the way one individual compels the other to become something, become infinitely great, become the most for which his powers may suffice.

In marriage, in my opinion, the point is not to achieve a rapid union by tearing down and toppling all boundaries. Rather, the good marriage is the kind where each person appoints the other as guardian of his solitude, and thus demonstrates to the other person the greatest faith he can bestow. The being-together of two human beings is an impossibility and, where it nonetheless seems to be present, it is a limitation, a mutual agreement that robs one or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. Yet once it is recognized that even among the closest individuals there extend infinite distances, a wonderful coexistence can develop when they succeed in loving the vastness between them, which affords them the possibility of seeing each other as complete figures before a great sky!

There is only one deadly mistake we can make: to attach ourselves to another human being, even if only for an instant.

People are so terribly far apart from each other, and people in love are often at the furthest distance. They throw all that is their own to the other person who fails to catch it, and it ends up in a pile somewhere between them and finally prevents them from seeing and walking toward each other.

everyone contains everything within himself: his fate, his future, his entire scope and world

Men only skim the surface of life; they are never pulled deeply into it by their own bodily fruit, the way women are. Once women have shed the conventions of pure femininity that they had been forced to adopt in their appearance, their true humanity, born of pain and humiliation, will emerge. And men, who still don’t sense this impending change, will be surprised and defeated. One day there will be a girl, and one day there will be a woman (in the Nordic countries there are already reliable signs of this), and their names will no longer mean only the opposite of masculinity. “Girl” and “woman” each will mean something for itself that does not make one think of a lack and a limit but makes us think only of life truly lived: woman in her full humanity.

To become oneself in love is the ultimate aim.