Rainer Maria Rilke, a Bohemian-Austrian poet and art critic (4 December 1875 — 29 December 1926), is one of the significant poets in the German language. Rilke is a transitional figure in twentieth century European literature, midway between the traditional and modern movements within poetry. His work struggles with the difficulty of union with the transcendent, in an age of anxiety, disbelief, and isolation. He wrote more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to his homeland of choice, the canton of Valais in Switzerland. Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus (1922) is a series of fifty-five poems indissolubly linked to Greek myth. Rilke dedicated this to Vera Ouckama Knoop, a young girl who was a talented dancer but died of leukemia as a teenager.
The Sonnets are ‘little songs’ (sonetti in Italian) sung by Orpheus, the legendary musician and poet in ancient Greek religion and myth whose divine music charmed all living things and moved inanimate objects. Overcome with grief at the death of his wife, Eurydice, Orpheus played beautiful mournful music on his lyre that the gods of the underworld allowed him to retrieve her from there on the condition that he walk in front of her on their journey back to the earth and not look back. Due to his fear of losing her again he did look back and lost Eurydice forever.
Poetry and Metamorphosis
The production of poetry transforms the visible into the invisible, a purely linguistic entity: poetry transcends the experiential world. In The Sonnets to Orpheus, the concept of poetry as a place of metamorphosis goes far beyond a particular treatment of the poetic genre. It also encompasses the idea that poetry also plays a prominent role in the attempt to lead a fulfilled life. Both Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus is an attempt to find valid answer to the existential question. Rilke’s attempt to use Orpheus as a symbol is the culmination of a number of themes and motifs dating back to the poet’s earliest writing, which coalesce into the figure of the singing god who redeems out of time into space.
Rilke’s Idea of Metamorphosis
Rilke’s idea of metamorphosis counteracts the religious concept of martyrdom, according to which eternal life is to be attainted via neglect of human nature. Orpheus and Wera are the product of metamorphic character in Rilke’s view; her dancing is described as an ‘art of movement and metamorphosis’, experiences a transformation into music and finally into drawing where it expresses itself more accurately.
The Orphic Myth
Like Duino Elegies, Rilke seeks to achieve metamorphosis by means of poetry and as a result the concept of metamorphosis becomes a core principal of poetic composition in his another writing The Sonnets to Orpheus. The ancient myth of Orpheus, son of the Thracian king Oeagrus and the muse Calliope, appealed to Rilke as it presents a whole series of metamorphosis. Three moments of metamorphosis are identifiable in the orphic myth.
Orpheus was the son of Apollo and the muse Calliope. The character of Orpheus, Rilke refers to as the “God with the Lyre”. Not only his fellow mortals, but wild beasts were softened by his strains, and gathering round him laid by their fierceness, and stood entranced with his lay.
Orpheus and the Underworld
When Orpheus makes his journey to the underworld, the meaning of his myth seems at first to become clearer. He represents the power of love, and the power of art, to overcome death. He challenges the shades and overcomes them with the loveliness of his song. He represents, too, the journey of the soul, which must descend to the lowest point, through realms of punishment, before it is purified, and can ascend again.
Orpheus transcends the boundaries of human existence by means of his singing. He enters the realm of death and overcomes his own death. Orpheus’s singing transforms animals into cultural beings and helps them to overcome the boundaries of their natural existence. Thus Orpheus serves as an ideal figure of metamorphosis who keeps the ‘double-realm’ of life and death and of nature and culture connected.
Rilke’s Philosophical Ideas
Rilke’s poetry expresses his philosophical ideas too. He, non-Platonically, non-Christianly and non-Cartesianly, reconciles the reader with the world outside. Accordingly his metaphors are largely used for reciprocity rather than hierarchy. He explores human consciousness and the interaction between human and non-human world in a very novel way.
Sonnets to Orpheus speak of “we”, “you”, and “I” interchangeably and are thus directed towards no particular person but to humanity in general. It is divided into two parts: part I consists of twenty-six sonnets, and part II, with its twenty-nine sonnets, form a cycle. The poems have fourteen lines, and all are divided, in the style of the Petrarchan sonnet, into an octave (two quartets) and a sestet (two tercets).
Conclusion
Rilke made an attempt to compose a whole cycle of sonnets using different stems of coherence like mythological figure Orpheus and a thematic centre of metamorphosis to understand the fulfillment of human existence. He uses the Orphic — a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth legend to explore the nature of poetry in relation to our lives. It is equally important to keep in view the ‘paramythic’ quality of The Sonnets to Orpheus as reflected in the sophisticated presentation of modern technology by Rilke. Rather he stimulates his reader’s imagination free from the constraints of modern thinking to turn towards the Orphic melody of life.
Works Cited
- Villan, Robert and Karen Leender (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Rilke. Cambridge: University Press, 2010. Print.
- David Bathrick and Andreas Huyseen (ed.), Modernity and the Text: Revisions of German Modernism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. Print.