The Dragon-Princess Summary

Mood introduces the next piece of prose by pointing out that it is taken from a letter written when Rilke was in his twenties, and its universal affirmation is rooted in the fact of Rilke's tentativeness as he writes it. Mood posits that "unambiguous affirmation is sentimentality" and that there is no sentimentality here.

Rilke's first point in the excerpt is to establish that individuals are, in fact, solitary, but so afraid to face it that no one ever does. If he did, the realization would be overwhelming, like having everything his eye was accustomed to resting on removed, and being set adrift in space. It would be in that state, however, if one were only to acclimate himself to it, that one could allow for the possibility of truly revolutionary, innovative, independent possibilities. Visions of the spirit world happen in...