Rummaging through old sketchbooks (31)
Monday, March 29, 2010
Health problems have been slowing me down again this season, which means my mood has often been as pearly grey as the mist on the hills this time of year. Today, however, a piece of correspondence jogged my memory of this quote I love, from Rilke:
"Everything is gestation and bringing forth. To let each impression and
each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the
dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's
own intelligence, and wait with deep humility and patience the
birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life.
Being an artist means not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the
tree which does not force its sap, and stands confident in the storms of
spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does
come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though
eternity lay before them so unconcernedly still and wide."