. . . how is it possible to live when after all the elements of this life are utterly incomprehensible to us? If we are continually inadequate in love, uncertain in decision and impotent in the face of death, how is it possible to exist? . . . I did not manage to express all of my astonishment over the fact that men have had for thousands of years to deal with life (not to mention God), and yet towards these first most immediate problems strictly speaking, these only problems (for what else have we to do, today still and for how long to come?) they remain such helpless novices, so between fright and subterfuge, so miserable. Isn't that incomprehensible?
—Rainer Maria Rilke, letter dated Nov. 8, 1915, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke: Volume 2, 1910–1926 (trans. Greene & Norton 1948)
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