The story goes that while staying at the Duino Castle, one morning needing to gather his thoughts in order to write an answer to a business letter, Rilke goes out in the storm. All of a sudden he hears a voice in the strong wind, calling: "If I cried out, who would hear me up there, among the angelic orders?"
He immediately writes those words down in his ever-present notebook and hence they become the first lines of Duino Elegies.

Let no one say that I don’t love life, the eternal
presence: I pulsate in her; she bears me, she gives me
the spaciousness of this day, the primeval workday
for me to make use of, and over my existence flings,
in her magnanimity, nights that have never been.
Her strong hand is above me, and if she should hold me under,
submerged in fate, I would have to learn how to breathe
down there.