ART. T RA D 1T ION. AND T RUT H
with something lost in endless darkenings,
in some remote, still place, so desolate
it does not sing whenever your depth sings.
Y et all that touches us, myself and you,
takes us together like a violin bow
that draws a single voice out of two strings.
Upon what instrument have we been strung?
And who is playing with us in his hand?
Sweet is the song.
13
This poem does not reflect either a deliberately contrived or a his–
torically accomplished inversion of the world. What it does reveal
is
the honesty of a perception that was not blinded by traditional pre–
conceptions, stereotypes, or cliches.
Do lovers always and only seek union?
If
the experience recorded
in Rilke's poem is new, it is new in the same way in which the Im–
pressionists' experience of light and shadow and color or Giotto's
experience of perspective was new. In each case, convention impeded
perception, and the achievement of the artist was a triumph of
honesty.
Of course, lovers do not always seek separation, any more than
love always makes us more lonely, or for that matter less lonely.
There is a wealth of experiences that are not dreamt of in the poetry
we have- no less, in fact, than are dreamt of only in poetry.
The experience which Rilke communicates depends on an ex–
treme sensitivity to the feelings of others, or at least one other human
being, and a penchant for analysis-traits which occur separately
more often than together- and perhaps also a purpose in life beyond
loving and being loved. Without exception, these were traits of
Nietzsche too, and they help to explain his dictum, "my greatest
dangers lie in pity." He himself comments on it in a letter (Septem–
ber
14, 1884): "This
is
the mistake which I seem to make eternally,
that I imagine the sufferings of others as far greater than they
really are."
NietZ'lche's "revaluation" of pity was prompted
in
part by his
honest perception of various experiences of pity, which for him was
not a mere word but a cross. I do not mean to dissolve a philosophic
position by deriving it from psychological accidents; on the contrary,
any philosophic discussion of pity should be based on an understand-
