SEED QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: What do you understand by "absorbing and transforming" our fates? How do you relate to "the future stands still, but we move in infinite space?" Can you share a personal experience where you felt you were moving in infinite space?
I am not a scholar in Latin but the Latin word for danger is 'periculum' which gave 'pericoloso' in Italian, 'peril' in French and English. Another Latin word 'perire' means: to die, from 'per'/ through and 'ire'/ to go. There is no 'ex perieri'. The Latin word 'experiri' means: to try out. Also generally understood to mean: going through.
The result of experience is stored in the brain as memory which in turn conditions further experience and limits it. A danger too often ignored.
I don't like Rilke's use of the word fate, since I think of fate as a predetermined end point, and I don't think any of us have one of those. I don't think I am living in my fate and it is emerging from me. I believe it is important to absorb my real self, which I think of as allow my real self and be true to it, and in the process I transform into who I am. My appreciation of "the future stands still" is that my future is uninvented and unknown, and it is invented by my choices moment by moment and is known in hindsight when I look back and see what I have become. Each of us does move in infinite space, meaning to me that there are infinite possibilities, and the product is and will be the result of my choices in living combined with what life does to me. I don't believe I have full control of my 'fate,' but I do have a significant part in the fate that is unfolding and being invented.
I have read this passage over and over and at this point I cannot grasp what the great poet is saying to his young friend. I have in stock another passage from Rainer Maria Rilke which struck me as very beautiful and insightful but I just don't have the key to this one. I will be on the look out for more inspiring comments.
Rilke occupies a special place in my life's journey.
When I was 19 and struggling to write poetry, I read his Letters To A Young Poet, and there was a question that he asked Kappus that brought me up short. I remember that Rilke's answer was something like this:
"You ask me whether you are a poet and I cannot tell you. But I will say this: You need to sit down with yourself and ask yourself very seriously if poetry is the most important activity in your life. Based on how you answer that question, you will be able to say whether or not you are a poet."
I closed the book, and after a long silence, from somewhere deep inside, my answer came.
"No, Poetry is not the most important thing in my life: LIVING is the most important thing!"
From that moment, I began to practice a life of poetry as exploration and not as a disguise.