
Contents
Preface: “The Whole Dictation of Existence”: “diktat desdaseins”
Get accessVice Provost for Arts, Humanities and Diversity and Professor of German and Comparative Literature
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Published:April 2014
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Extract
The longer I live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence [das ganze Diktat des Daseins] up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word which transforms into magnificent sense everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand.1Close
Rilke wrote these words to Ilse Erdmann on December 21, 1913, close to the end of a year during which he had met Sigmund Freud in person, spent more time with Lou Andreas-Salomé, and drafted a poem that he would not complete for another decade as the first of the Duino elegies. By writing down “the whole dictation of existence,” Rilke hopes to register those experiences that we normally go through without noticing. Do not overlook anything, pay attention to everything, spell it all out up to the most minuscule and negligible word and letter: That is Rilke’s aesthetic motto and his guide for life. In order not to miss anything or get distracted in the task of living mindfully and honestly, the poet must not decide in advance between important and unimportant things. He has to write in the conviction that each experience and every word possesses a value all its own.
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