Between nature and literature

Spring is finally blooming here. I've been too busy capturing it out and about rather than concentrating on my blog. And then of course with invigorating my body, treating my minor health problems and obsessing with this song. And also starting my own business. I feel a little sleep-deprived, I admit it. Too many ideas and  a few hours to turn them concrete. Life's inevitable cycle.

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love

and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,

and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others

fall: again and again the two of us walk out together

under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.    

Rainer Maria Rilke

  source

This Prague-born poet spent a few months in Duino, near Trieste, from 1911 to 1912, guested by the local lords, and found inspiration to write his Duino Elegies after walking the path that connects Sistiana to Duino villages along the coast. We walked the trial that is named after him, the Rilke Path, today, on a beautiful Spring afternoon. 

I wonder why we took so long to visit this place after 4 years here. My husband thinks this is because of my obsession with Slovenia, which makes me prefer other destinations, whereas the surroundings of Trieste have their beauty. He got a point.  Well, better later than never. And since "the Carso is a bundle of Chinese boxes. When you open one of them you find another one inside." (credits) I'm looking forward to exploring it slowly. We're even considering to buy moutain bikes, which is part of the plans we have to live a healthy life and do more excercise out in the nature. 

Yes, the Spring-times needed you deeply. Many a star

must have been there for you so you might feel it. A wave

lifted towards you out of the past, or, as you walked

past an open window, a violin

gave of itself. All this was their mission.

But could you handle it? Were you not always,

still, distracted by expectation, as if all you experienced,

like a Beloved, came near to you? (Where could you contain her, with all the vast strange thoughts in you going in and out, and often staying the night.)

But if you are yearning, then sing the lovers: for long

their notorious feelings have not been immortal enough.

Those, you almost envied them, the forsaken, that you

found as loving as those who were satisfied. Begin,

always as new, the unattainable praising:

think: the hero prolongs himself, even his falling

was only a pretext for being, his latest rebirth.

But lovers are taken back by exhausted Nature

into herself, as if there were not the power

to make them again. Have you remembered

Gastara Stampa sufficiently yet, that any girl,

whose lover has gone, might feel from that

intenser example of love: ‘Could I only become like her?’

Should not these ancient sufferings be finally

fruitful for us? Isn’t it time that, loving,

we freed ourselves from the beloved, and, trembling, endured

as the arrow endures the bow, so as to be, in its flight,

something more than itself? For staying is nowhere.

From the Duino Elegies.