“For what is apparent external security when there is all this life and death extremity in one's innermost being?

. . .

My dear boy, we shall survive it! And then it will be one power more in us, and our heart shall have grown more mighty through it and all that we can feel more holy and more pure and more obligating.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter to Thankmar von Münchhausen (September 17, 1914)