Having lived abroad for many years now
in a non-English speaking country, I often find myself wondering about quotes such as this one, quotes that have been translated from another language into English. It’s not easy to transfer the depth of meaning from one language to another, and though we try, we often have to rely on approximations that will work in the cultural context of the language we are translating into.
Rainer Maria Rilke has so many beautiful quotes attributed to him, and they seem to make so much sense to me in their English form, but still I wonder, what meaning do they have and what sentiments do they hold in their original forms? How true to the spirit of his language are these English variations?
