Rilke, Valéry and Yeats [antikvár]

Prcfacc This study begins with the consideration of a number of texts. For if we listen carefully enough to a poet's work, it will begin to speak, first sotio voce, then louder, until finally its characteristic accents ring in the ear, and demand transcription into the critic's language. At the start, it is difficult to catch the notes clearly, to set down the exact line and timbre of the sound, to trace each tone back to its source. But here the accumulation of texts helps, for one passage will answer and reinforce another, confirm a first hunch while ignoring a second, point to a new way just when all others seem to fail. And so, with patience, the patterns slowly emerge, as if of themselves. The particular texts assembled at the beginning have a specific focus: They all concern in some way Rainer Maria Rilke's view of the body. The initial foray into Rilke's writings on Rodin shows the poet speaking as critic about Rodin's sculpture of human figures. The texts from the Auf-zeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge give a related perception, turned into action and incident. Balancing these are passages from the poetry which pick up similar strands, now transformed into metaphor or image, now the theme or subject of a poem. The mood changes, the tone shifts, the explicit focus varies, but through these fluctuations a sense for Rilke's unusually fluid view of the body should emerge. This first stopping point is no permanent resting place, for it introduces questions where we least think to ask them in the daily course of things. It makes us look at our own looking. It obtrudes thought into that which is ordinarily taken vii