Tattoo Tuesday {25} Rilke

Do you have a literary tattoo? I’d love to feature it!

Just send me an email with a picture and story behind it.

After picking up a book of Rilke poetry in NY, I’ve been captivated by his writing. I’ve already come across one (or two…) lines that I would consider getting inked in the future. So of course I had to feature a Rilke tattoo this week! Here is what Stellar had to say about their tattoo :

there are so many parts of this poem that resonate with me, however I chose the first line because it reminds me to stay fluid. If there is one thing I can be sure of it’s that everything is constantly transforming.

(source)

from:

Be ahead of all departure, as if it were already
behind you, like the winter which is almost over.
For among winters there is one so endlessly winter,
that, wintering through it, may your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice—, singing ascent,
praising ascent, returning to pure relation.
Here, among the disappearing, be, in the realm
of decline, be the ringing glass that shatters even as it sounds.

Be—and yet know Not-being’s condition,
the infinite ground of your innermost movement,
that you may bring it to completion but this one time.

To that which is used-up, as to nature’s abundant
dumb and mute supply, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself and the result destroy.

- Excerpt from Sonnets to Orpheus XIII by Rainer Maria Rilke