Monday, October 10, 2011

Bon mot for the week

"We stare at the brightness of a new page where everything can yet happen."


Rainer Maria Rilke  (1875-1926)


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3 comments:

JES said...

Very nice. Although Rilke was obviously feeling sprightly on that day about his prospects for filling the page. It's like an Arctic explorer peeking out of the igloo in the morning and exclaiming, "Yes! Yes! I just love a good whiteout!"

October 10, 2011 10:09 AM
Froog said...

Well, Rilke is in fact remarkably free of explicit comment or emotion here. The infinite possibilities of the unstarted may seem more probably uplifting to most people, but for some they may be daunting or depressingly inaccessible. Is the blank page a spur to action or a source of paralysing dread? We all project our own responses on to it - the blank page - and on to Rilke's evocation of it. Rilke, he just stares. Who knows what was going on in that fertile brain of his?

Perhaps he was thinking, "I'll just have one more cup of coffee, and hang the laundry up... and THEN I'll get started."

October 11, 2011 12:31 AM
JES said...

The infinite possibilities of the unstarted

Ooooh. Nicely done.

It's interesting how changing whiteness (or blankness) to brightness, or vice-versa, can alter the whole tone of that quotation. Is the glass half-empty or half-full?

October 11, 2011 8:09 PM

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