“Solitude is like a rain That from the sea at dusk begins to rise;”
Documented source
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About this line
"Solitude" comes from Das Buch der Bilder, The Book of Images, published in Berlin in 1902 and expanded in 1906. Rilke’s title is “Einsamkeit.”
His German opens with a closed sentence: “Die Einsamkeit ist wie ein Regen.” Jessie Lemont’s 1918 translation runs it on into the second line, which ends on a semicolon in both languages.
In this poem the rain doesn’t fall first. It rises from the sea at dusk, floats up to the sky, and sinks back over the town. By the end it is drifting through the gray before dawn, over people who share a bed and still feel alone.
Why we carry this line
I first read this Rilke line on a rainy day. Solitude, loneliness, raindrops rising before they fall. We all have those days, rain or not.
The design
One brushstroke climbs up through the words, starting under the second line and running past “rain.” It rises the way the poem’s rain does: up from the sea first, before it ever falls.
