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752 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2005
I have seen them all: from the young impressionist, full of classical quotations (and an almost arrogant mastery of the verses) to the more dusky, thoughful, almost existentialist poet who struggled on the last fragments. After having gone through the various shades of Rilke that this Einaudi collection encloses, I feel quite exhausted, as if Rilke himself had dragged me into his own personal Odyssey.
In spite of all the differences and peculiarities, however, I have to admit that going through the various facets of this bohemian poet has led me to a very personal conclusion:
Rilke was not a poet, or at least not in the usual sense of the word. I see him much more like a painter or a sculptor, with the only difference being the tool at his disposal: a pen, rather than a brush or a chisel. His verses are lashed against the canvas, or sculpted on marble, and the stanzas (including the quasi-prose of the Duineser Elegien) are vivid images, detailed landscapes. Rilke frames figures almost literally, just like his friend Rodin (whom he idolized); while skimming the pages of this collection, I felt exactly like I was walking into a weird art exhibition, Impressionist at first, and Expressionist at last.
I am so like the little anemone I once saw in the gardens in Rome; it had opened itself up so wide in the course of the day that when night fell it was no longer able to close. It was quite shocking to see it so open in the darkened meadow, still avid to take in —into its frantically-wide-open chalice; swamped by the night above it —inexhaustible... I, too, am as irremediably turned outwards, and I am consequently distracted by everything, refusing nothing. My senses, altogether without my permission, make towards every disturbance: when there is noise, I give myself up and I am that noise —and since anything that is focused on stimulus wants to be stimulated, I clearly want to be disturbed, and am so, without end.
(26 June 1914)