san domenico near fiesole, 19 april 1898

in stone bins before these walls many pansies have awakened, and they follow the rousing and resting of my days like warm, watchful eyes. i wish i could always be such that my ways would need never startle them, and that i would seem to them, at least in my deepest hours, a being long their kin, whose final faith is a festive and lucid springtime and far behind it a heavy, beautiful fruit.

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and at last only a dialogue remains, a to-and-fro of twilight questions and dark answers, a broad murmuring of complementary sounds: the arno and the night. longing is most intense around this time; and if then, deep below, some dreamer happens to improvise a melancholy song on his mandolin (...) it sings like a solitary woman who deep in night sounds the name of her far-off beloved and tries to urge into this poor narrow word all her tenderness and her fervor and all the treasures of her deep being.

17 may

you remember how i emphasized so strongly in my lecture on poetry the degree to which each motif can present itself to me as an occasion for certain deeply intimate confessions. back then it was a matter of the vaguely felt. now i am more conscious in all these feelings, and thus in my creative work can be more instinctive; for consciousness heightens my culture, and this, in turn, assures me that i am choosing the right bowls in which to place my quiet liberations like flowers and pieces of ripe fruit.

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the way toward the true value of all works of art goes through solitude. to surround oneself with a book, with a painting, with a song, for two or three days, to become familiar with tis habits and to trace its oddities, to gain confidence in it, to earn its trust, and to experience something together with it, no matter what: a grief, a dream, a longing.

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we have grown older, not only in years, but also in goals. (...) spring's pale endlessness we have invented as a lie, and our bleeding hands show the insurmountability of the last walls. but neither may we send our poor dreams out beyond them like doves with olive branches; they will not return. we must be human. we need eternity. (...) rather than dreaming of the spacious, flowering countryside, we must remind ourselves of the enclosed garden, which has its infinity as well: summer. help us to gain it. to found a summer. that must be our goal. [...] we must become men of spring, in order to find our way of spring, in order to find our way into that summer whose sovereign majesty we have been placed here to announce.

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i often find myself wanting to say to someone (i know not whom): "don't be sad". and it seems to me as though this were an intimate confession, one that i would have to express softly and tenderly and in deep twilight. we all have something like a fear in us. we shall be like mothers. for the time being we remain like girls who have burning hands and woeful dreams; but let it be known: we shall be like mothers!

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you must learn only to believe; you must become pious in a new sense. you must have your longing over you, in whatever place you are. you must hold it with both hands and carry it into the sun, where it is happiest; for your longing must grow strong again.

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i am like a child who was hanging from a precipice. it is reassured when its mother grasps it in dear, quiet strength, even if the abyss is still below it and thorns splay between its cheek and her breast. it fells itself held, lifted - and is reassured.

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all i need is strength. everything else that would make me a proclaimer i feel within me. i don't want to journey through all countries and try to spread my teaching. above all i don't want to let i harden and petrify into a doctrine. i want to live it. and only into your soul, darling, do i want to pilgrimage, deep, deep inside, where it becomes a temple. and there i want to raise my longing like a monstrance into your splendor.

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perhaps in spite of everything i am not destined to see that summer i know will come. perhaps i myself have only springtime strength in me. but i have the heart for summer and the faith of blissfulness.

may 22

all the longing and tenderness i had locked inside them came over me and surrounded me like a wild springtime and lifted me up as if with white, gentle, unseen hands - toward where, i don't know. but so high that the days were like little villages with red roofs and tiny church steeples and memories were like people standing small and silently in their doorways, waiting for something.

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moments of creativity are like twilights after heavy summer days. [...] these are moments only, but in these moments i look deep into the earth. and see the causes of all things like the roots of broad rustling trees. and see how they all reach to one another and hold one another like brothers. and the all drink form one source. and these are moments only, but at these moments i see high into the sky. and see the stars like quiet, smiling blossoms of these rustling trees. and they sway and wave to one another and know that one depth gives them fragrance and sweetness. and these are moments only, but at these moments i look far across the earth. and i see that people are strong and solitary tree trunks that lead like broad bridges from the roots to the blossoms and calmly and serenely lift the juices into the sun.

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but now: there are still, to be sure, gentle and rare conversations that build up between the things and my love; but when they want to rise like walls before our eyes, longing is triumphant over all reserve. we extend our hands to each other, and even if this gesture is always greeting and farewell in a single reach, we feel that the silentness between the two will expand with each day and will each deed, and that it will pry open the boundaries that are still superimposed, until there will be as much space between finding and farewell as between morning and the ave maria and that in between an entire day filled with eternity will go on and on.

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(...) "you have always been in such close contact with nature, haven't you - even as a child?" "no", i said - and was surprised at the feeling in my words - "it is only very recently that i have gazed at it and savored it this way. for a long time we walked along next to each other in embarrassment, nature and i. it was as if i were at the side of a being whom i cherished but to whom i dared not say: 'i love you'. since then i must have finally said it; i don't know when it was, but i feel that we have found each other." later the young lady said: "i am ashamed to say it, but i feel almost like a corpse; my occasional pleasures have grown so faint, and i've lost all desire." i acted as though i hadn't heard anything and then pointed suddenly in quick delight: "a firefly, do you see it there?" she nodded: "there, too." - "and there - and there," i added, carrying her away. "four, five, six -," she kept on counting in excitement; then i laughed: "how ungrateful you are; that's what life is: six fireflies and more and more. and you want to deny it?!"

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however much belonged to me i would love tenderly and allow all that was latent in my possession to ripen in my inmost being.