Analysis of Child in Red

Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)



Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.

She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around...
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.

Then she dances a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.

It's not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.

It's this dress that she'll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right.


Scheme AXBXX XXXX XXXX XABX AAXX
Poetic Form
Metre 0111101000 1011 101001001 0101011111 010101010111 1101101 1101 01110101 1101 1110011 1101001 1110111 1111 11111111 101100100 111110001 1001 11111010 10001010 10111111 010111111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 672
Words 125
Sentences 7
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 5, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 21
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 108
Words per stanza (avg) 25
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 08, 2023

38 sec read
262

Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. more…

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