Rainer Maria Rilke : bearing witness

Abstract

This study of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) explores both epistemological and ontological themes, explicitly asking what readers may "bear witness to" within themselves, as well as on the page, through their reading. The primary question of the study comes from Martin Heidegger's essay on Rilke when (quoting Hölderlin) he asks: "What are poets for (in these destitute times)?" and whether this has genuine significance beyond entertainment or diversion. The spiritual complexity of Rilke's work has been of some interest to many scholars. In this study I centralise that interest at book-length for the first time since Frederico Olivero's 1931 study of mysticism in Rilke's work. Also for the first time I privilege the perspective of the contemporary general reader, looking at the spiritual variances and ambiguities within Rilke's work and why they may have a particular resonance for twenty-first century readers. This allows for a more diffused discussion about reading as well as writing, with attention to the acquisition of knowledge and the forces of imagination and inspiration as well as subjectivity. The study looks closely at Rilke's poetry, from the popular Book of Hours to the more challenging Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, as well as the varied translations into English, using that variety to intensify insights about the inevitable subjectivity of readers as well as translators. I discuss Rilke's psychologically and socially complex life, revealed in part through his legacy of more than 10,000 letters. How readers "read" the life of a writer self-evidently colours their reading of the work. I propose that this simultaneously allows for an enhanced "reading" of and greater understanding of their own spiritual or existential needs and individual subjectivity. The study calls on the work of a number of critics outside the field of literary studies. These include the psychoanalytic writers Alice Miller and James Hillman and the philosophers Hans-Georg Gadamer, Iris Murdoch, Gaston Bachelard, John Armstrong, George Steiner, Gabriel Marcel, Rudolf Otto and Martin Heidegger. The study speaks both explicitly and implicitly for John Keats's idea of "negative capability" and the specific demands of bringing to the reading of Rilke, and the writing about him, the receptiveness and concentration of a "poet's mind where, as Rilke himself urged, questions can matter more than answers and the need for absolutism can be postponed.

Date of Award	2008
Original language	English