Wellington Leg: I’m always open to guest bloggers but when Rainer Maria Rilke drops by I roll out the red carpet. It’s true that literary giants have fared poorly on this blog and Alan Greenspan wasn’t available to comment on Twentieth Century Lyrical Poetry. I think we should all curl up with Sonnets to Orpheus for the next ten days and hold our breath.
The purpose of life is to defeated by greater and greater things. I think this quote from Rilke is a template for a great noir story given the subtle suggestion that even anti-heroes or maybe especially antiheroes should die with their boots on. Rilke’s focus is on the personal not the political; he’s referring to the small things each of us must overcome to do the things we set out to do.
For writers many obstacles are self created, others grow naturally from the process. I think that writers block is probably some combination of inner demons being fed by external events such as rain, fog, a keyboard that sticks on the letter R and God knows how tough it is to avoid using the letter R in a piece of any length. Add high winds to the list, ringing doorbells, singing nuns, NFL scores, designer pizzas, Fed Ex delivery times, the exact location of the Snickers bar you hid from yourself and it’s a miracle anything gets accomplished.
Rainer Maria Rilke, this blog’s for you.