Rainer Maria Rilke is among the most introspective of German and world poets, possessing from an early age a profound spirituality that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
This yearning for transcendence was influenced by his time in Russia which culminated in the collection “Stundenbuch” in 1905 (or Book of Prayers), a collection focusing on the themes of mystical longing and the search for a God.
In the poem “Ich lebe mein Leben in Wachsenden Ringen” (I live my life in growing circles), for example, Rilke explores the eternal recurrence of time from a typically Nietzschean perspective (in fact he had been introduced to Nietzschean rhetoric by his lover and renowned writer and psychoanalyst, Lou Andreas-Salomé).
However, he views this recurrence as an endless research of the figure of God. This is his task at which the poet may never succeed; he has been trying for thousands of years and will probably have to search for him for a thousand more.
Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,
Und ich kreise jahrtausendelang
I go in circles around God, around the ancestral tower
And I go in circles for thousands of years
Another influence on his work was his job as a secretary for the famous sculptor Rodin.
Under Rodin’s mentorship, Rilke shifted from the abstract and sentimental tone of his early works to a more concrete and image-focused style.
This shift is evident in the collection “Neue Gedichte” in 1907 (New Poems), where he refined the “Dinggedicht” (thing-poem), capturing the essence of objects through precise and vivid imagery.
Arguably, the most famous poem written with this technique is Der Panther (The Panther).
The intent here is to blend precise imagery with deep emotional resonance, we see it for example in the lines
Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
So müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält
Its look, from the passing of the bars,
Has become so weary, that it can hold nothing more
We see that although the subject is the panther, the focus is shifted on its feelings and turmoil.
This vision of a tormented natural world presents itself often in Rilke’s poetry.
For example in Herbsttag (Autumn Day), we read the following lines:
Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren
Und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los
Lord: it is time. The summer was immense
Cast your shadow on the sundials
And let the winds loose on the countryside
These lines show an almost prophetic arrival of a monstrous identity, which is simply Autumn.
In Herbst (Autumn), he describes the leaves as doing so
Sie fallen mit verneinender Gebärde
They fall with gestures of rejection
Rilke’s world is inherently negative in the way he perceives it. Even the leaves seem to abhor the natural world to which they owe their life.
This universality of suffering sees completion, thematically, in Rilke’s more mature works such as the collections “Duineser Elegien” (Duino Elegies) and “Sonette an Orpheus” (Sonnets to Orpheus) which explore the interplay between suffering and beauty.
The first Duino elegy fully encapsulates this new path taken by Rilke in his poetic journey, which will also be its last.
We read,
Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? und gesetzt selbst, es nähme
einer mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem stärkeren Dasein. Denn das Schöne ist nichts
als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen, und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht,
uns zu zerstören.
Who, if I cried out, would hear me out of the Angelic orders?
And even if against his own heart, one were to press me: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
Thus beauty is nothing more than the beginning of terror, which we can still now endure, and we wonder why it serenely lets
That we be destroyed.
In these final lines, Rilke tells us a fundamental truth: there is no beauty without terror, whereas terror exists independently from beauty.
The conclusion that we must extrapolate is that beauty is nothing but a blessed island in a sea of despair that we inhabit, but how beautiful that it is there, and for that we must be grateful.
Rilke understands that if the substrate of the world is wretchedness, then we shall rise above it for the very sake of rising above it, and that we call beauty.