Rainer Maria Rilke Diskussionforum

Hello everyone,

Can you please help me find this quote in German? I've been searching for it in vain, and I would really appreciate your help.

"What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are."

Thanks!

Hallo ctasquin,

»Was von uns verlangt wird, ist, daß wir das Schwere lieben und mit dem Schweren umgehen lernen. Im Schweren sind die freundlichen Kräfte, die Hände, die an uns arbeiten. Mitten im Schweren sollen wir unsere Freuden haben, unser Glück, unsere Träume; da, vor der Tiefe dieses Hintergrunds, heben sie sich ab, da sehen wir erst, wie schön sie sind.«

In posting 11646 you can find two sentences more, and in answering it Harald tells us in which book the whole letter can be found.

And I just found an even longer passage quoted here (number 12). Apparently Rilke wrote it in a letter to Emmy Hirschfeld, 20. November 1904.

Herzlichen Gruß,
stilz

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it.