Rilke on love and other difficulties; Translations and considerations of Translation: John Hood    W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1975
                                                   

.27

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people; that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.  For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude.  And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep emotion.

.28

A Togetherness between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a reciprocal against which robs either party or both of his fullest freedom and development.  But, once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distance continues to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!