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by Rainer Maria Rilke (1923)

2023 reads, 11.75/12 (Interlude II):

To finish my Gravity's Rainbow interlude, I read the final major work of Rilke I had yet to read: The Sonnets to Orpheus. These are a series of 55 sonnets, written in two linked cycles (representing life and death?), written in 1922 in the span of about three weeks.

These poems are described as religious, but I would instead broaden that to spiritual. Like, intensely spiritual. This mysticism is mixed with themes of solitude, life & death, and the arts. In Greek myth, Orpheus was a bard, so symbols of music (specifically a lyre) are interspersed throughout these poems. These symbols are used as a device to represent creating poetry, but I felt it applied to any creative endeavor.

He alone who has known the roots of the willow can bend the willow-branch into a lyre.

These poems are as deep as you want them to be. You can let the words flow over you, or you can do as much digging as you want, line-by-line, picking apart the allegories, personification, and symbolism throughout. However, I found them to be more readable on the surface than the Duino Elegies. If you are looking to get into Rilke, I would start here (or his Letters to a Young Poet).

Oh unheard starry music! Isn't your sound protected from all static by the ordinary business of our days?