Objectivity is mankind's glorious goal, summoning narcissism, Eros masked, from the dreams of childhood to the service of research, progress, art, an… - Lou Andreas-Salomé

Once upon a time, everything was based on trust, free from worry or care; now everything stands in doubt. One upon a time, the wondrous was taken for granted; now everything that had been taught her -- even the most obvious and certain -- appears gnarled and incomprehensible. In such a moment, a child helplessly gropes for the hand of the adult in order to find guidance and direction; but another type of childlikeness, intimately related to the ideals of life, can rapidly gather strength and masculine force. Far from subduing Nora or attuning her to compromise, the first decisive conflict acts upon her like a battle cry . . . Resistance and bravery harden into armor. She has grasped that the peaks of wonder in life do not appear as readily as the fairies who awaken Sleeping Beauty; in life peaks must be conquered. That insight she is willing to put to the test . . .

Perhaps life's earnestness might often come to destroy the lovers' play, as it had today, perhaps the little song of love might often die out unheard amid the painful, confused tones that assail his heart [as a physician], as it had today. -- But with a happy face she will from this day forward raise up her arms to him, in gratitude that he does not merely caress her and forget life's seriousness when he is with her, but that he struggles with life for himself and for her. And in her lap he shall rest his head when he is suffering. Perhaps then a tender dream will always rise up anew -- in a night like this one -- and, ever again, secretly weave, in the dark, new love around their life. -- -- -- ("One Night") p. 74

[On receiving the newly completed Sixth, Eighth and Tenth Duino Elegies] Ah слава Богу [Russian for thank God] dear Rainer, how rich his gift to you -- and yours to me! I sat and read and cried from joy, and it was not just joy at all but something much more powerful, as if a curtain were being parted, rent, and everything were growing quiet and certain and present and good. I remember as if it were today how much the beginning of the last Elegy plagued you, and when it had shaken me so severely, how even that plagued you; it has been on your lips for such long years; a word which one cannot make conscious and which is there all the same; in the beginning was this word. And then the Creature Elegy [the Eighth]! -- It is the poem of my most secret heart, oh so sayably glorious; and said, the inexpressible made present and actual. And that, finally is the message of this poetry: that we are surrounded, ringed by things of mute presence that are being rescued, redeemed into existence for us only thus, and yet it is these things alone by which we live. (p. 332-33)