Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

1. Rainer Maria Rilke(1875-1926)

2. AC: People see you and they expect to hear “Me and Bobby McGee.” In retrospect, how prophetic is the line “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”? Kris Kristofferson: It definitely expressed the double-edged sword that freedom is. Unless you’ve lost everything – and I certainly haven’t – you’re not free. If you’ve got a family you’re not as free as if you’re alone. But nobody wants to be alone. I have no illusions [that] I’m free. I’m chained to a lot. But I don’t want to get free of my family, my home, and people I love. I like the responsibilities that keep me from being free. ---(Austin Chronicle, Feb. 23 2006)

3. Stefan Zweig: “…No one lived more gently, more secretly, more invisibly than Rilke… Silence seemed to grow around him, wherever he went, wherever he was… It was difficult to reach Rilke. He had no house, no address where one could find him, no home, no steady lodging, no office. He was always on his way through the world, and no one, not even he himself, knew in advance which direction it would take.”

4. Paris

5. Rome

6. Duino Castle (Switzerland)

7. Rodin to Rilke: “Travailler, travailler, travailler!” (“Work, work, work!”)

8. Robert Bly: “Even those who do not know German can hear, if they read over the four opening lines of ‘The Panther,’ the äsound, repeating, returning monotonously, incessantly, like the bars before the panther’s eyes.”

9. Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe So müd geworden, dass er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausendStäbe gäbe Und hinter tausendStäben keine Welt. ---------------------------------------------------------- From seeing the bars, his seeing is so exhausted That it no longer holds anything anymore. To him the world is bars, a hundred thousand Bars, and behind the bars, nothing. ---(translated by Robert Bly)

10. The lithe swinging of that rhythmical easy stride Which circles down to the tiniest hub Is like a dance of energy around a point In which a great will stands stunned and numb. Only at times the curtains of the pupils rise Without a sound . . . then a shape enters, Slips through the tightened silence of the shoulders, Reaches the heart, and dies. (Robert Bly)

11. Like Romantics: Emphasis on Imagination, attention to form (rhyme, sonnets, etc.) Unlike Romantics: No “I” in “poem.” Attempt to de-emphasize self (individual) and draw truth from object itself

12. Like Modernists: “Existential” aloneness; search for truth/God in the individual rather than priest/religion Unlike Modernists: Belief in some universal truth; not considered avant-garde

13. “Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity. . .” --- Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet