Il faut travailler, rien que travailler
“Rilke had gone to Paris in 1902 to write a monograph on Rodin and this exhortation of the sculptor’s had a transforming effect on the twenty-seven-year-old poet. In letter after letter he repeated Rodin’s mantra-like injunction. Immerse yourself in your work: let life fall away, dedicate yourself to the great work. Il faut travailler, rien que travailler.
…
Though he was seduced and persuaded of the truth of Rodin’s exhortation to do nothing but work, he found it difficult to submit to in practice …
‘I have often asked myself whether those days on which we are forced to be indolent are not just the ones we pass in profoundest activity? Whether all our doing, when it comes later, is not only the last reverberation of a great movement which takes place in us on those days of inaction …’ “
Don’t we all wish we could be Geoff Dyer?
The next six weeks are going to be really difficult, I think.
