That we may all come into the present finished, able and focused

"Letters on Cezanne"Rainer Marie Rilke
translated by Joel Agee; Fromm International Publishing Corporation, NY; 1985

September 13, 1907 (Friday)

Nearly 100 years ago.

" ...Never have I been so touched and almost gripped by the sight of heather as the other day, when I found these three branches in your dear letter. Since then they are lying in my Book of Images, penetrating it with their strong and serious smell, which is really just the fragrance of autumn earth. But how glorious it is, this fragrance. At no onther time, it seems to me, does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to taste, and more than honeysweet where you feel depth within itself, darkness something of the grave almost, and yet again wind; tar adn turpentine and Ceylon tea. Serious and poor like the smell of a begging monk and yet again hearty and resinous like precious incense. And the way they look: like embroidery, splendid; like three cypresses woven into a Persian rug with violet silk (a violet of such vehement moistness, as if it were the complementary color of the sun). You should see this. I don't believe these little twigs could have been as beautiful when you sent them: otherwise you would have expressed some astonishment about them. Right now one of them happens to be lying on dark blue velvet in an old pen and pencil box. It's like a fireworks: well no, it's really like a Persian rug. Are all these millions of little branches really so wonderfully wrought? Just look at the radiance of this green which contains a little gold, and the sandalwood warmth of the brown in the little stems, and that fissure with its new, fresh, innner barely-green. --Ah, I've been admiring the splendor of these little fragments for days and am truly ashamed I was not happy when I was permitted to walk about in a superabundance of these. One lives so badly, because one always comes into the present unfinished, unable, distracted."

...more tomorrow.

To my beloved, for the heather which arrived today among the roses.

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