Rainer Rilke was born in Prague, December 4, 1875. He died on December 29, 1926. Rilke was subject to a military education at an early age and then studied business. Neither of these areas interested him, and he never completed his university education.

In 1897 he met Lou Andreas-Salome. She remained a part of his life for many years after their love affair ended. He later married the sculptor Clara Westhoff.

The marriage lasted nearly one year.

Rilke traveled widely throughout Europe. He was active in literary and artistic circles. For a time he worked as a secretary to the sculptor Rodin. From 1919 to until his death in 1926 he lived in Switzerland.

His major published works include:

Book of Hours (1905; English translation, 1941)

New Poems (2 vols., 1907-08; English translation, 1964)

Duino Elegies (1911-22; English translation, 1930, 1939)

Sonnets to Orpheus (1923; English translation 1936)

Late Poems (published posthumously in 1934)

A comprehensive review of a biography, Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke by Ralph Freedman can be found in the April 1996 issue of Atlantic Monthly (http://www.TheAtlantic.com/atlantic/issues/96apr/rilke/rilke.htm).

The heart of art is narcissistic. This preoccupation with self is the essence of Rilke’s art, and I think that going beyond Rilke it the genesis of all art. What is striking about his early work (New Poems 1906) is the quality of vision and simple elegance in his rendering. His later work (Sonnets to Orpheous 1923) has more diffused images and dimmer clarity that communicates greater maturity and higher confidence.

Rilke has been classified a modernist, but I tend to see him as an impressionist. What does impressionism in poetry look like? Not a study of the object, but a study of the impression it evokes an exploration of the feelings it engenders. It is the stylized portrayal of inner-reality and has a life independent from outer-reality. The heart of art is narcissistic. Rilke’s work is what impressionism in poetry looks like with images of inner and outer realities recreated in the personal vision of the poet.

Fall Day

Lord, it is time. This was a very big summer.

Lay your shadows over the sundial,

and let the winds loose on the fields.

Command the last fruits to be full;

give them two more sunny days,

urge them on to fulfillment and throw

the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Who has no house now, will never build one.

Whoever is alone now, will long remain so,

Will watch, read, write long letters

and will wander in the streets, here and there

restlessly, when the leaves blow.

What fields are fragrant as your hands?

You feel how external fragrance stands

Upon your stronger resistance.

Stars stand in images above.

Give me your mouth to soften, love;

Ah, your hair is all in idleness.

See, I want to surround you with yourself

And the faded expectation lift

From the edges of your eyebrows;

I want, as with inner eyelids sheer,

To close for you all places which appear

By my tender caresses now.

(R.M. Rilke, 1909)

The Seven Phallic Poems

I

The rose-gatherer grasps suddenly

The full bud of his vitality,

And, at fright at the difference,

The gentle garden within her shrinks.

II

Summer, which you so suddenly are, you're

Drawing my seed up into an abrupt tree.

(Inner spaciousness, feel in yourself the lee

Of night in which it is mature.)

Now to the firmament it rose and grew,

A mirror-image resembling a tree.

O fell it, that, having turned unerringly

In your womb, it knows the counter-haven anew,

In which it really towers and really races.

Daring landscape, such as an inner-seer

Beholds in a crystal ball. That innerness here

In which the being-outside of stars chases.

There dawns death which shines outside like night.

And there, joined with all futures,

Are all who once were, the finite,

Crowds crowded round crowds for sure,

As the angel intends it outright.

III

We close a circle by means of our gazes,

And in it the tangled tension fuses white.

Already your unwitting command raises

The column in my genital-woodsite.

Granted by you, the image of the god stands

At the gentle crossroads under my clothes;

My whole body is named after him. We both

Matter like a province in his magic lands.

Yet yours is to be grove and heaven around

The Hermean pillar. Yield. Thereby freedom

For the god along with his hounds,

Withrawn from the delightfully ravaged column.

IV

You don't know towers, with your diffidence.

Yet now you'll become aware

Of a tower in that wonderful rare

Space in you. Hide your countenance.

You've erected it unsuspectingly,

By turn and glance and indirection,

And I, blissful one, am allowed entry.

Ah, how in there I am so tight.

Coax me to come forth to the summit:

So as to fling into your soft night,

With the soaring of a womb-dazzling rocket,

More feeling than I am quite.

V

How the too ample space has weakened you and me.

Superfluity recollects itself suddenly.

Now wormwood and absinthe trickle through silent

Sieves of kisses of bitter essence.

How much we are - from my body

A new tree raises its abundant crown

And mounts toward you: but what's it to be

Without the summer which hovers in your womb.

Are you, am I, the one each so greatly delights?

Who can say, while we dwindle. Perhaps a column

Of rapture stands in the chamber room,

Sustains the vault, and more slowly subsides.

VI

To what are we near? To death, or that display

Which is not yet? For what would be clay to clay

Had not the god feelingly formed the figure

Which grows between us. But understand for sure:

This is my body which is resurrected.

Now gently deliver it from the burning grave

Into that heaven which in you I crave:

That from it survival be boldly effected.

You young place of ascension deep.

You dark breeze of summery pollen.

When its thousand spirits romp madly all in

You, my stiff corpse again grows soft asleep.

VII

How I called you. This is the mute call

Which within me has grown sweet awhile.

Now step after step into you I thrust all

And my semen climbs gladly like a child.

You primal peak of pleasure: suddenly well-nigh

Breathless it leaps to your inner ridge.

O surrender yourself to feeling its pilgrimage;

For you'll be hurled down when it waves on high.

(R.M. Rilke, 1915)

I

Breath, you invisible poem! Joy's

perpetual permutation

of pure space for pure existence. Counterpoise

of my rhythmical realization.

Single wave, whose ocean

I am gradually named;

surely the very frugallest possible ocean-

space reclaimed!

How many parts of space had already begun

to exist in me! I find

in a wind a son.

Do you know me, air, full of what were once my places?

You, the one-time smooth rind,

rondure and leaf of my phrases.

II

Just as sometimes the hastily nearest

Just as sometimes the hastily nearest

leaf takes the real, the master-stroke,

mirrors often receive the dearest

smile that nothing can re-invoke,

from girls, when they try on the morning, alone,

or graciously move through lighted spaces.

And later the real, the breathing faces

palely reflect what was once their own.

What have eyes not seen in the flickering flosses

of dying fires in chamber or hall:

gleams of life from a fading scroll.

O earth, O earth, who could count your losses?

Only who, praising in spite of all,

sang of the heart born into the whole.

III

Mirrors: at last to reveal in rhyme

the life that you really live!

You strange interstices of time,

as full of holes as a sieve.

Squandering the room you were left to keep,

wide as forests when twilight broods...

And the sixteen-pointed lustre's leap

through your virginal solitudes!

Sometimes you are full of portraiture:

welcoming some to your last recesses,

diverting others, shy and demure.

But the fairest will always remain inside

But the fairest will always remain inside

till through to the cheeks you are holding presses

Narcissus, released and clarified.

IV

This is the creature that has never been.

They never knew it, and yet none the less

entirely loved it, from its suppleness

to the very light of the eyes, mild and serene.

It never was. And yet their love supplied

the need of being. They always left a space.

And in that clear space they had set aside

it lightly raised its head and felt no trace

of not being real. They did not give it corn,

but fed it with their feeling that it might,

somewhere, exist. Were able to confer

such strength, its forehead grew a horn. One horn.

It came up to a virgin once, all white -

and lived on in the mirror and in her.

V

Ever-opening anemone,

does that meadow-morning lap of yours

mean to catch the whole polyphony

that the singing light of heaven pours

on your starry flower, so distended

to receive as much as heaven gives,

that sometimes (such a fullness has descended),

sunset, with its mild imperatives,

almost fails to bend the too-retorted

edges of your petals back again?

What a world of power unreported!

We, with our shows of violence, deceive.

Our lives are longer, but on, O, what plane

shall we at last grow open and receive?

Sonnets To Orpheus Second Part (R. M. Rilke 1923)

Tanslated J.B. Leishman