The supreme problem of every age is that of finding its consummate artistic expression. Before this problem every other remains of secondary importance. History defines and directs its physical course, science cooperates in the achievement of its material aims, but Art alone gives to the age its spiritual physiognomy, its ultimate and lasting expression. The process of Art is on the one hand sensuous, the conception having for its basis the fineness of organization of the senses; and on the other hand it is severely ...
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The supreme problem of every age is that of finding its consummate artistic expression. Before this problem every other remains of secondary importance. History defines and directs its physical course, science cooperates in the achievement of its material aims, but Art alone gives to the age its spiritual physiognomy, its ultimate and lasting expression. The process of Art is on the one hand sensuous, the conception having for its basis the fineness of organization of the senses; and on the other hand it is severely scientific, the value of the creation being dependent upon the craftsmanship, the mastery over the tool, the technique. Art, like Nature, its great and only reservoir for all time past and all time to come, ever strives for elimination and selection. It is severe and aristocratic in the application of its laws and impervious to appeal to serve other than its own aims. Its purpose is the symbolization of Life. In its sanctum there reigns the silence of vast accomplishment, the serene, final, and imperturbable solitude which is the ultimate criterion of all great things created.
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Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague in 1875. At Worpswede, he married Clara Westhoff, a pupil of the sculptor Rodin. Rilke was most productive in Paris, but traveled widely to Russia, Italy, Spain and Egypt as well. In 1919 he went to Switzerland and wrote his final works, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. He died of leukemia in 1926.
It has become something of a cliche to say so, but Rilke's poetry does indeed seem to be imbued with an indwelling spirit. In his introduction, Robert Hass asserts, "His poems have the feeling of being written from a great depth in himself. . .They seem whispered or crooned into our inmost ear, insinuating us toward the same depth in ourselves. The effect can be hypnotic."
Here is the opening to "The First Elegy" of the Duino Elegies: "Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' / hierarches? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed / in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing / but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, / and we are so awed because it serenely disdains / to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying."
This is less reassuring than Romantic poet John Keats' formulation, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" from "Ode on a Grecian Urn." In Rilke's poem, the speaker refers to beauty's obliterating power and its indifference. Hass says that the angels are "absolute fulfillment" for Rilke or, if you will, perfected being. Confronted with such unutterable wholeness, one might well be teetering on the void.
On the other hand, in remarkable poems such as "The Panther," in his utter surrender, Rilke seems less to be writing about an animal than inhabiting its coiled essence, seeing through its unshuttered eyes: "It seems to him there are / a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world. // Only at times, the curtain of the pupils / lifts, quietly--. An image enters in, / rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles, / plunges into the heart and is gone."
William Carlos Williams said that "you can't get the news from poetry but men die everyday from the lack of what is found there." Rilke feeds the hunger.
(NOTE: Rilke's poetry is featured prominently in Wim Wenders' excellent film, "Wings of Desire").
