Rilke on Joy
‘These things have I spoken unto you’, says Christ in the Gospel, ‘that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full’ (Jn 15:11). Joy, like peace, is a criterion of authenticity in spiritual discernment. It matters, then, to distinguish it clearly. On 31.01.1914 Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to Ilse Erdmann: ‘The reality of any joy in the world is indescribable; only in joy does creation take place (happiness, on the contrary, is only a promising, intelligible constellation of things already there); joy is a marvellous increasing of what exists, a pure addition out of nothingness. How superficially must happiness engage us, after all, if it can leave us time to think and worry about how long it will last. Joy is a moment, free of obligation, timeless from the beginning, not to be held but also not to be truly lost again, since under its impact our being is changed chemically, so to speak, and does not only, as may be the case with happiness, savour and enjoy itself in a new mixture.’
