The Collected Works of Rainer Maria Rilke

The spirit of the Middle Ages with its religious fervour and superstitious fanaticism is symbolized in several poems, the most important among which are The Cathedral, God in the Middle Ages, Saint Sebastian personifying martyrdom, and The Rose Window, whose glowing magic is compared to the hypnotic power of the tiger's eye. Modern Paris is often the background of the New Poems, and the crass play of light and shadow upon the waxen masks of Life's disillusioned in the Morgue is caught with the same intense realistic vision as the flamingos and parrots spreading their vari-coloured soft plumage in the warmth of the sun in the Avenue of the Jardin des Plantes.

Almost all of the poems in these two volumes are short and precise. The images are portrayed with the sensitive intensity of impressionistic technique. The majestic quietude of the long lines of The Book of Pictures is broken, the colours are more vibrant, more scintillating and the pictures are painted in nervous, darting strokes as though to convey the manner in which they were perceived: in one single, all-absorbing glance. For this reason many of these New Poemsare not quite free from a certain element of virtuosity. On the other hand, Rilke achieves at times a perfect surety of rapid stroke as in the poem The Spanish Dancer, who rises luminously on the horizon of our inner vision like a circling element of fire, flaming and blinding in the momentum of her movements. Degas and Zuloaga seem to have combined their art on one canvas to give to this dancer the abundant elasticity of grace and the splendid fantasy of colour.

Many of the themes in the New Poems bear testimony to the fact that Rilke travelled extensively, prior to the writing of these volumes, in Italy, Germany, France, and Scandinavia. His book on the five painters at the artists' colony at Worpswede, where he remained for a time, entirely given over to the observation of the atmosphere, the movement of the sky and the play of light upon the far heath of this northern landscape, is an introduction to every interpretation of the work of landscape painters and a tender poem to a land whose solitary and melancholy beauty entered into his own work.

More vital than the influence of the personalities and the art treasures of the countries which Rilke visited and more potent in its effect upon his creations, like a great sun over the most fruitful years of his life, stands the towering personality of Auguste Rodin. The New Poems bear the dedication: "A mon grand ami, Auguste Rodin," indicating the twofold influence which the French sculptor wielded over the poet, that of a friend and that of an artist.

One recalls the broad, solidly-built figure of Rodin with his rugged features and high, finely chiselled forehead, moving slowly among the white glistening marble busts and statues as a giant in an old legend moves among the rocks and mountains of his realm, patient, all-enduring, the man who has mastered life, strong and tempered by the storms of time. And one thinks of Rainer Maria Rilke, young, blond, with his slender aristocratic figure, the slightly bent-forward figure of one who on solitary walks meditates much and intensely, with his sensitive full mouth and the "firm structure of the eyebrow gladly sunk in the shadow of contemplation," the face full of dreams and with an expression of listening to some distant music.

From no other book of his, not excepting The Book of Hours, can we deduce so accurate a conception of Rilke's philosophy of Life and Art as we can draw from his comparatively short monograph on Auguste Rodin.

Rilke sees in Rodin the dominant personification in our age of the "power of servitude in all nature." For this reason the book on Rodin is far more than a purely æsthetic valuation of the sculptor's work; Rilke traces throughout the book the strongly ethical principle which works itself out in every creative act in the realm of art. This grasp of the deeper significance of all art gives to the book on Rodin its well-nigh religious aspect of thought and its hymnlike rhythm of expression. He begins: "Rodin was solitary before fame came to him, and afterward he became perhaps still more solitary. For fame is ultimately but the summary of all misunderstandings that crystallize about a new name." And he sums up this one man's greatness: "Sometime it will be realized what has made this great artist so supreme. He was a worker whose only desire was to penetrate with all his forces into the humble and the difficult significance of his tool. Therein lay a certain renunciation of life but in just this renunciation lay his triumph—for Life entered into his work."

Rodin became to Rilke the manifestation of the divine principle of the creative impulse in man. Thus Rilke's monograph on Auguste Rodin will remain the poet's testament on Life and Art.

Rilke has lived deeply; he has absorbed into his artistic and spiritual consciousness many of the supreme values of our time. His art holds the mystic depth of the Slav, the musical strength of the German, and the visual clarity of the Latin. As artist, he has felt life to be sacred, and as a priest, he has brought to its altar many offerings.

H.T.

NEW YORK CITY,

AUTUMN, 1918.

FIRST POEMS

EVENING

The bleak fields are asleep,

My heart alone wakes;

The evening in the harbour

Down his red sails takes.

Night, guardian of dreams,

Now wanders through the land;

The moon, a lily white,

Blossoms within her hand.

MARY VIRGIN

How came, how came from out thy night

Mary, so much light

And so much gloom:

Who was thy bridegroom?

Thou callest, thou callest and thou hast forgot

That thou the same art not

Who came to me

In thy Virginity.

I am still so blossoming, so young.

How shall I go on tiptoe

From childhood to Annunciation

Through the dim twilight

Into thy Garden.

THE BOOK OF PICTURES

PRESAGING

I am like a flag unfurled in space,

I scent the oncoming winds and must bend with them,

While the things beneath are not yet stirring,

While doors close gently and there is silence in the chimneys

And the windows do not yet tremble and the dust is still heavy—

Then I feel the storm and am vibrant like the sea

And expand and withdraw into myself

And thrust myself forth and am alone in the great storm.

AUTUMN

The leaves fall, fall as from far,

Like distant gardens withered in the heavens;

They fall with slow and lingering descent.

And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls

From out the stars into the Solitude.

Thus all doth fall. This hand of mine must fall

And lo! the other one:—it is the law.

But there is One who holds this falling

Infinitely softly in His hands.

SILENT HOUR

Whoever weeps somewhere out in the world

Weeps without cause in the world

Weeps over me.

Whoever laughs somewhere out in the night

Laughs without cause in the night

Laughs at me.

Whoever wanders somewhere in the world

Wanders in vain in the world

Wanders to me.

Whoever dies somewhere in the world

Dies without cause in the world

Looks at me.

THE ANGELS

They all have tired mouths

And luminous, illimitable souls;

And a longing (as if for sin)

Trembles at times through their dreams.

They all resemble one another,

In God's garden they are silent

Like many, many intervals

In His mighty melody.

But when they spread their wings

They awaken the winds

That stir as though God

With His far-reaching master hands

Turned the pages of the dark book of Beginning.

SOLITUDE

Solitude is like a rain

That from the sea at dusk begins to rise;

It floats remote across the far-off plain

Upward into its dwelling-place, the skies,

Then o'er the town it slowly sinks again.

Like rain it softly falls at that dim hour

When ghostly lanes turn toward the shadowy morn;

When bodies weighed with satiate passion's power

Sad, disappointed from each other turn;

When men with quiet hatred burning deep

Together in a common bed must sleep—

Through the gray, phantom shadows of the dawn

Lo! Solitude floats down the river wan …

KINGS IN LEGENDS

Kings in old legends seem

Like mountains rising in the evening light.

They blind all with their gleam,

Their loins encircled are by girdles bright,

Their robes are edged with bands

Of precious stones—the rarest earth affords—

With richly jeweled hands

They hold their slender, shining, naked swords.

THE KNIGHT

The Knight rides forth in coat of mail

Into the roar of the world.

And here is Life: the vines in the vale

And friend and foe, and the feast in the hall,

And May and the maid, and the glen and the grail;

God's flags afloat on every wall

In a thousand streets unfurled.

Beneath the armour of the Knight

Behind the chain's black links

Death crouches and thinks and thinks:

"When will the sword's blade sharp and bright

Forth from the scabbard spring

And cut the network of the cloak

Enmeshing me ring on ring—

When will the foe's delivering stroke

Set me free

To dance

And sing?"

THE BOY

I wish I might become like one of these

Who, in the night on horses wild astride,

With torches flaming out like loosened hair

On to the chase through the great swift wind ride.

I wish to stand as on a boat and dare

The sweeping storm, mighty, like flag unrolled

In darkness but with helmet made of gold

That shimmers restlessly. And in a row,

Behind me in the dark, ten men that glow

With helmets that are restless, too, like mine,

Now old and dull, now clear as glass they shine.

One stands by me and blows a blast apace

On his great flashing trumpet and the sound

Shrieks through the vast black solitude around

Through which, as through a wild mad dream we race.

The houses fall behind us on their knees,

Before us bend the streets and them we gain,

The great squares yieled to us and them we seize—

And on our steeds rush like the roar of rain.

INITIATION

Whosoever thou art! Out in the evening roam,

Out from thy room thou know'st in every part,

And far in the dim distance leave thy home,

Whosoever thou art.

Lift thine eyes which lingering see

The shadows on the foot-worn threshold fall,

Lift thine eyes slowly to the great dark tree

That stands against heaven, solitary, tall,

And thou hast visioned Life, its meanings rise

Like words that in the silence clearer grow;

As they unfold before thy will to know

Gently withdraw thine eyes—

THE NEIGHBOUR

Strange violin! Dost thou follow me?

In many foreign cities, far away,

Thy lone voice spoke to me like memory.

Do hundreds play thee, or does but one play?

Are there in all great cities tempest-tossed

Men who would seek the rivers but for thee,

Who, but for thee, would be forever lost?

Why drifts thy lonely voice always to me?

Why am I the neighbour always

Of those who force to sing thy trembling strings?

Life is more heavy—thy song says—

Than the vast, heavy burden of all things.

SONG OF THE STATUE

Who so loveth me that he

Will give his precious life for me?

I shall be set free from the stone

If some one drowns for me in the sea,