Status Updates From Reading Rilke: Reflections ...

I was already hoping to break out of the prison of monolingualism in the coming year, and boy is this book egging me on.

Denounce is all he does. Rilke has no program for social reform.

To read with recognition (not just simple understanding) is to realize why writer made the choices he or she made

Half of life has been lived. Heavy with its succulent fruit, that life looks down upon its future, but it is a future in which this present, now past, can only be remembered. The reflection in the water resembles reality almost exactly, yet it is just that—a picture. And you and I then, adopting the poet’s position, can halve ourselves to see what we are now as well as what we shall become: illusory.