Forgot How to Look HWSM 05 017

2025-11-22T00:00:00Z

Forgot How to Look With all of their eyes, animals behold openness. Only our seeing is retrospective, set like traps around them, an obstacle that blocks the path to freedom. What does exist outside we come to know from their faces alone; in fact, we make even young children turn and take a backward look at fixed concepts, not at the openness deep in those mammal features. Free of death. That , only we see; the unhindered animal keeps its decline and sunset ever behind it, with God before; and, if it walks, goes forward in timelessness, like springs that well and flow. (p. 61) Rilke, Rainer Maria. "Eighth Elegy." Duino Elegies . 1923. Alfred Corn (trans.), W.W. Norton, 2021. https://search.worldcat.org/title/1156989441