Extract
[...] According to Rilke, these sorrows are the only ones to be 'dangerous and bad?'. Sadness is a strange feeling, because instead of laughing and being happy, the physical manifestation of this feeling is to cry. That's why most men living in society are embarrassed by the fact that this physical manifestation could happen and do everything in critical situations to hold back their tears and avoid all tears 'l. I think that almost all our sorrows are moments of tension that we feel like paralysis, deaf as we are to the life of our feelings struck with strangeness'. [...]
[...] According to Rilke, catharsis through sadness is something positive that everyone should feel. For him, it's also leaving his daily comfort: l.16-17: 'it's that everything familiar, everything usual is taken away from us for an instant . ' After having seen the different characteristics of catharsis through sadness, we will see the strangeness that sadness represents and its relationship to men. It is obvious that crying in the street or in any public space represents a discomfort both for the one who cries and for those who are nearby. [...]
[...] Another thing that proves that what we feel is not necessarily what defines us is our duty as humans, as political animals, as Aristotle says in his Politique, to appear and not to be in society, which makes it so that many times, individuals in the street or other public spaces can, out of respect for society, simulate anger, joy or sadness. This is what is called social hypocrisy. But no one really knows what's going on inside us, in our souls and thoughts. The more we have a good social hypocrisy, the more we are impenetrable. [...]
[...] The problem here is to want to associate two terms that diverge in part since the inner self, it is not the emotions and feelings, but the emotions and feelings are part of the inner self. But to know oneself, is it to understand what one feels? To ask this question is to ask if our inner self is the cause of our feelings and emotions. It is obvious that knowing oneself is not just the fact of understanding what one feels. Nevertheless, we can say that feeling joy or sadness, being more irritable or calm, says something about your inner self. [...]
[...] In the excerpt we are studying, Rilke tries to show this young poet how sadness transforms us and in what way sadness is a fierce and misinterpreted feeling by ordinary mortals. That is why, we will ask ourselves, how a feeling that usually occurs when an unfortunate event occurs, can it transform us. In a first part, we will see how sadness can serve as a catharsis for men, then in a second and last part, we will see that sadness is a strange feeling that frightens men. Catharsis, the purging of passions, allows the individual who practices it to recharge, to start over on new bases, to be reborn. [...]
