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THE INNER LIGHT

(15.1.16)

A billion stars go spinning through the night,

Blazing high above your head.

But in you is the presence that

Will be, when all the stars are dead.

            Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian poet, 1885-1926)

Do you remember the famous phrase used by the seventeenth century French genius and polymath, Blaise Pascal, ’ Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m’effraie’? It translates, ‘The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me’ – and might be how you feel when you look up and see the sky full of stars. The starriest sky I ever saw was in the Australian outback, when, against the utter darkness on earth, the heavens seem to whirl in showers of white sparkling dust – as if all human aspirations and fears had been cremated and the ashes flung upon the sky with abandon, to stay there for eternity. Yes, the Southern Cross was awe-inspiring – almost beyond language. I don’t think I have ever felt so insignificant. I was in Australia to research my novel ‘The Invasion of Sand’ and yet my sense of humility within the landscape almost stopped me writing forever. Words can die on your lips and in your heart, you see, when you are confronted by immensity.

But then again…here is the quote I chose for this week’s Daily Mail advice column. What a contrast this is. For we have another great writer facing that night sky unafraid. Rilke seems to look up and defy eternity, placing human kind upon a pedestal that reaches higher than the heavens themselves. Taken literally, he says that at the end of all things, when the ‘stars are dead,’ the soul of human kind will continue.

Or does he mean that God himself is ‘the presence’ within humankind and that it is the Godhead that will continue, even beyond the last Big Bang? If you are an atheist you will naturally reject this; on the other hand, if you are a Humanist you may well rejoice at my first interpretation with its defiant assertion of the autonomous Soul.

For myself, I have no idea – because I stop when poetry is over-analysed, and in any case, this is a translation from the German, and a German-speaker may find much more nuance in the original.  But it doesn’t really matter, does it? I chose the quotation on a page, which deals with human sorrows and dilemmas simply to remind readers to hold their heads up and remember to cultivate their inner selves. It is all too easy to allow the world and its infinite worries to terrify you – and you do not need to look up at the night sky to feel puzzled, afraid, even full of despair. I want to tell my readers, ‘You have an inner light – and never forget it. Your light can twinkle like the stars or blaze like the sun.’ That is the point of using these words by Rilke. Look in the mirror and tell yourself, ‘My light will shine as long as I love, am loved and face life bravely, whatever changes it brings and no matter how terrifying is the ultimate darkness of death.’