Das Stunden-Buch
1905
Das Stunden-Buch
1905
This is Rilke's most intimate spiritual document, a trilogy of love poems addressed directly to God. Written after his transformative journey to Russia in 1900, these verses arrived with a weight the poet himself could not explain - he kept them silent for years, considering them sacred and utterly unlike anything else he would create. The three books trace a journey: from the desperate longing of a soul seeking the divine, through the darkness of divine absence, to a strange and hard-won faith that finds God not in cathedrals but in the ordinary miracle of existing. Rilke's language burns with urgency and tenderness, mixing the vernacular with the mystical in ways that feel both ancient and startlingly modern. This is not theology but wrestling - a mortal consciousness reaching toward infinity, often failing, always reaching. For readers willing to sit with mystery rather than solve it, these poems offer something rare: language that makes the unsayable breathe.
Editions
X-Ray
“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.””
— Rainer Maria Rilke
“I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enoughto make every moment holy.I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enoughjust to lie before you like a thing,shrewd and secretive.I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,as it goes toward action;and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times,when something is coming near,I want to be with those who know secret thingsor else alone.I want to be a mirror for your whole body,and I never want to be blind, or to be too oldto hold up your heavy and swaying picture.I want to unfold.I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,because where I am folded, there I am a lie.and I want my grasp of things to betrue before you. I want to describe myselflike a painting that I looked atclosely for a long time,like a saying that I finally understood,like the pitcher I use every day,like the face of my mother,like a shipthat carried methrough the wildest storm of all.””
— Rainer Maria Rilke
“If we surrenderedto earth's intelligencewe could rise up rooted, like trees.””
— Rainer Maria Rilke
“I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.””
— Rainer Maria Rilke
“I love the dark hours of my being.My mind deepens into them.There I can find, as in old letters,the days of my life, already lived,and held like a legend, and understood.””
— Rainer Maria Rilke
“God speaks to each of us as he makes us,then walks with us silently out of the night.These are the words we dimly hear:You, sent out beyond your recall,go to the limits of your longing.Embody me.Flare up like a flameand make big shadows I can move in.Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.Just keep going. No feeling is final.Don't let yourself lose me.Nearby is the country they call life.You will know it by its seriousness.Give me your hand.””
— Rainer Maria Rilke
“You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything the darkness that comes with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up.So many live on and want nothing And are raised to the rank of prince By the slippery ease of their light judgmentsBut what you love to see are faces that do work and feel thirst. You love most of all those who need you as they need a crowbar or a hoe. You have not grown old, and it is not too late To dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret.””
— Rainer Maria Rilke
“If we surrenderedto earth’s intelligencewe could rise up rooted, like trees.Instead we entangle ourselvesin knots of our own makingand struggle, lonely and confused.So like children, we begin again...to fall,patiently to trust our heaviness.Even a bird has to do thatbefore he can fly.””
— Rainer Maria Rilke
“I want my own will, and I wantsimply to be with my will,as it goes toward action.And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times,when something is coming near,I want to be with those who knowsecret things or else alone...I want to unfold.I don’t want to be folded anywhere,because where I am folded,there I am a lie.””
— Rainer Maria Rilke
