Analysis of Rahel to Varnhagen
NOTE.—Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were married, after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The marriage—so far as he was concerned at any rate—appears to have been satisfactory.
Now you have read them all; or if not all,
As many as in all conscience I should fancy
To be enough. There are no more of them—
Or none to burn your sleep, or to bring dreams
Of devils. If these are not sufficient, surely
You are a strange young man. I might live on
Alone, and for another forty years,
Or not quite forty,—are you happier now?—
Always to ask if there prevailed elsewhere
Another like yourself that would have held
These aged hands as long as you have held them,
Not once observing, for all I can see,
How they are like your mother’s. Well, you have read
His letters now, and you have heard me say
That in them are the cinders of a passion
That was my life; and you have not yet broken
Your way out of my house, out of my sight,—
Into the street. You are a strange young man.
I know as much as that of you, for certain;
And I’m already praying, for your sake,
That you be not too strange. Too much of that
May lead you bye and bye through gloomy lanes
To a sad wilderness, where one may grope
Alone, and always, or until he feels
Ferocious and invisible animals
That wait for men and eat them in the dark.
Why do you sit there on the floor so long,
Smiling at me while I try to be solemn?
Do you not hear it said for your salvation,
When I say truth? Are you, at four and twenty,
So little deceived in us that you interpret
The humor of a woman to be noticed
As her choice between you and Acheron?
Are you so unscathed yet as to infer
That if a woman worries when a man,
Or a man-child, has wet shoes on his feet
She may as well commemorate with ashes
The last eclipse of her tranquillity?
If you look up at me and blink again,
I shall not have to make you tell me lies
To know the letters you have not been reading
I see now that I may have had for nothing
A most unpleasant shivering in my conscience
When I laid open for your contemplation
The wealth of my worn casket. If I did,
The fault was not yours wholly. Search again
This wreckage we may call for sport a face,
And you may chance upon the price of havoc
That I have paid for a few sorry stones
That shine and have no light—yet once were stars,
And sparkled on a crown. Little and weak
They seem; and they are cold, I fear, for you.
But they that once were fire for me may not
Be cold again for me until I die;
And only God knows if they may be then.
There is a love that ceases to be love
In being ourselves. How, then, are we to lose it?
You that are sure that you know everything
There is to know of love, answer me that.
Well?… You are not even interested.
Once on a far off time when I was young,
I felt with your assurance, and all through me,
That I had undergone the last and worst
Of love’s inventions. There was a boy who brought
The sun with him and woke me up with it,
And that was every morning; every night
I tried to dream of him, but never could,
More than I might have seen in Adam’s eyes
Their fond uncertainty when Eve began
The play that all her tireless progeny
Are not yet weary of. One scene of it
Was brief, but was eternal while it lasted;
And that was while I was the happiest
Of an imaginary six or seven,
Somewhere in history but not on earth,
For whom the sky had shaken and let stars
Rain down like diamonds. Then there were clouds,
And a sad end of diamonds; whereupon
Despair came, like a blast that would have brought
Tears to the eyes of all the bears in Finland,
And love was done. That was how much I knew.
Poor little wretch! I wonder where he is
This afternoon. Out of this rain, I hope.
At last, when I had seen so many days
Dressed all alike, and in their marching order,
Go by me that I would not always count them,
One stopped—shattering the whole file of Time,
Or so it seemed; and when I looked again,
There was a man. He struck once with his eyes,
And then there was a woman. I, who had come
To wisdom, or to vision, or what you like,
By the old hidden road that has no name,—
I, who was used to seeing without flying
So much that others fly from without seeing,
Still looked, and was afraid, and looked again.
And after that, when I had read the story
Told in his eyes, and felt within my heart
The bleeding wound of their necessity,
I knew the fear was his. If I had failed him
And f
Scheme | A XABXACXXXDBAXXEEFGEXHXIXXXXJEAXKCLGXXDMNOOXEXMXXXPXQXXMXROHS XAXTRFXNGARSKEXPXCTXQXI XLBXMNJXXOOMAXAXX |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110011101010101010100101111101110101111010 1111111111 110101101110 1101111111 1111111111 110111101010 1101111111 0101010101 11110111001 11111011 0101011111 1111111111 1101011111 11111101111 1101011111 10110101010 11110111110 1111111111 0101110111 11111111110 0101010111 1111111111 1111011101 1011001111 010110111 01000100100 1111011001 1111110111 10111111110 11111111010 11111111010 110010111010 01010101110 10101101 1110111101 1101010101 1011111111 1111010110 0101101 1111110101 1111111111 11010111110 11111111110 010101000110 1111011010 0111110111 0111110101 1101111101 01110101110 1111101101 1101111101 0101011001 1101111111 11110101111 1101110111 0101111111 1101110111 0100011111111 111111110 1111111011 111110100 1101111111 11110100111 111010101 11010110111 0111011111 011100101001 1111111101 1111110101 1101001101 01110100100 1111011111 11110101110 0111110100 1101001110 101001111 1101110011 111101101 0011110101 0111011111 1101110101 0111111111 1101110111 101111111 1111111101 11010011010 1111111111 1110001111 1111011101 1101111111 01110101111 11011101111 1011011111 11111100110 11110110110 1101010101 01011111010 1011010111 0101110100 11011111111 01 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,406 |
Words | 883 |
Sentences | 39 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 60, 23, 17 |
Lines Amount | 101 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 847 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 219 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 4:25 min read
- 128 Views
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"Rahel to Varnhagen" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10018/rahel-to-varnhagen>.
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