Reading

“…In marriage, the point is not to achieve a rapid union by tearing down and toppling all boundaries. Rather, in a good marriage, each person appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude and thus shows him the greatest faith he can bestow. The being together of two human beings is an impossibility; where it nonetheless seems to be present it is a limitation, a mutual agreement that robs one or both parts of their fullest freedom and development. Yet once it is recognized that even among the closest people there can remain infinite distances, a wonderful coexistence can develop once they succeed in loving the vastness between them that afford them the possibility of seeing each other in their full gestalt before a vast sky!

For this reason the following has to be the measure for one’s rejection or choice: whether one wishes to stand guard at another person’s solitude and whether one is inclined to position this same person at the gates of one’s own depth of whose existence he learns only through what issues forth from this great darkness, clad in festive garb.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Life, p. 36

Trans. Ulrich Baer

Came across this while looking for readings for the wedding. Lovely.