Original artwork, not a still
Letters to a Young Poet • 1929
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
Rilke turns down the usual picture of love as two people merging into one. For him the best love keeps both people whole: each protects the other's solitude, stays close enough to meet, and still greets the other from a separate place. That is why the sentence travels so well, from wedding readings to cards and tattoos, and why every English version words it a little differently.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for Letters to a Young PoetShow the scene
The line comes from the seventh of Rilke's ten letters to Franz Xaver Kappus, a young officer cadet who had sent him poems for advice. Rilke wrote it in Rome on 14 May 1904, in a letter about love and the need for aloneness. He argues that people who surrender wholly to another leave no room for solitude, and that a more humane kind of love is still being prepared, one in which each partner guards the other's solitude. His German reads "schützen, grenzen und grüßen", which English translators render in different ways. Kappus published the letters in 1929, three years after Rilke's death.
Sources (2)
- Rilke, Briefe an einen jungen Dichter, seventh letter (German text, rilke.de)letter dated Rome, 14 May 1904; the sentence on love as two EinsamkeitenReference checked
- Wikipedia, Letters to a Young Poetintro; section on the seventh letterReference checked
Context reviewed
