Analysis of Elegy IV



O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes?
We are not of one mind. Are not like birds
in unison migrating. And overtaken,
overdue, we thrust ourselves into the wind
and fall to earth into indifferent ponds.
Blossoming and withering we comprehend as one.
And somewhere lions roam, quite unaware,
in their magnificence, of any weaknesss.

But we, while wholly concentrating on one thing,
already feel the pressure of another.
Hatred is our first response. And lovers,
are they not forever invading one another's
boundaries? -although they promised space,
hunting and homeland. Then, for a sketch
drawn at a moment's impulse, a ground of contrast
is prepared, painfully, so that we may see.
For they are most exact with us. We do not know
the contours of our feelings. We only know
what shapes them from the outside.

Who has not sat, afraid, before his own heart's
curtain? It lifted and displayed the scenery
of departure. Easy to understand. The well-known
garden swaying just a little. Then came the dancer.
Not he! Enough! However lightly he pretends to move:
he is just disguised, costumed, an ordinary man
who enters through the kitchen when coming home.
I will not have these half-filled human masks;
better the puppet. It at least is full.
I will endure this well-stuffed doll, the wire,
the face that is nothing but appearance. Here out front
I wait. Even if the lights go down and I am told:
"There's nothing more to come," -even if
the grayish drafts of emptiness come drifting down
from the deserted stage -even if not one
of my now silent forebears sist beside me
any longer, not a woman, not even a boy-
he with the brown and squinting eyes-:
I'll still remain. For one can always watch.

Am I not right? You, to whom life would taste
so bitter, Father, after you - for my sake -
slipped of mine, that first muddy infusion
of my necessity. You kept on tasting, Father,
as I kept on growing, troubled by the aftertaste
of my so strange a future as you kept searching
my unfocused gaze -you who, so often since
you died, have been afraid for my well-being,
within my deepest hope, relinquishing that calmness,
the realms of equanimity such as the dead possess
for my so small fate -Am I not right?

And you, my parents, am I not right? You who loved me
for that small beginning of my love for you
from which I always shyly turned away, because
the distance in your features grew, changed,
even while I loved it, into cosmic space
where you no longer were...: and when I feel
inclined to wait before the puppet stage, no,
rather to stare at is so intensely that in the end
to counter-balance my searching gaze, an angel
has to come as an actor, and begin manipulating
the lifeless bodies of the puppets to perform.
Angel and puppet! Now at last there is a play!
Then what we seperate can come together by our
very presence. And only then the entire cycle
of our own life-seasons is revealed and set in motion.
Above, beyond us, the angel plays. Look:
must not the dying notice how unreal, how full
of pretense is all that we accomplish here, where
nothing is to be itself. O hours of childhood,
when behind each shape more that the past lay hidden,
when that which lay before us was not the future.

We grew, of course, and sometimes were impatient
in growing up, half for the sake of pleasing those
with nothing left but their own grown-upness.
Yet, when alone, we entertained ourselves
with what alone endures, we would stand there
in the infinite space that spans the world and toys,
upon a place, which from the first beginnniing
had been prepared to serve a pure event.

Who shows a child just as it stands? Who places him
within his constellation, with the measuring-rod
of distance in his hand. Who makes his death
from gray bread that grows hard, -or leaves
it there inside his rounded mouth, jagged as the core
of a sweet apple?.......The minds of murderers
are easily comprehended. But this: to contain death,
the whole of death, even before life has begun,
to hold it all so gently within oneself,
and not be angry: that is indescribable.


Scheme AXBXXBCA DEFFGXXHIIX XHXEXXXXJEKXXXBHXXX LXBELDXDXXX HXXXGXIXMDXXEMBXJCXBE KXAXCXDX XXNXXFNBXM
Poetic Form
Metre 1111111101 1111111111 0100100100 101110010101 0111010101 100010010111 01101101 0111101 11110100111 01010101010 10110101010 1110100101010 10011101 10011101 110101001110 10110011111 111101111111 01110101101 1111011 11110101111 101100010100 101010101011 1010101011010 1101101010111 11101111001 11010101101 1111111101 1001011111 11011111010 0111101010111 1110101110111 110111101 010111001101 10010110111 1111011011 1010101011001 11010101 110111111 1111111111 11010101111 1111110010 1101001111010 111110101010 111101011110 10101111101 11110111110 0111010100110 0110100110101 111111111 0111011111111 11101011111 11111010101 010011011 10111101101 1111000111 01110101011 10111110101001 110101101110 11111100010100 010101010101 100101111101 111111010110 10100101001010 110111010101010 0101101011 110101010111 101111101011 101110111011 101111101110 111101111010 11110010010 010111011101 110111111 1101101001 1101011111 001001110101 010111011 1101110101 110111111101 011010101001 1100111111 11111111 110111011101 101111100 1100010111011 011110011101 1111110011 01110110100
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 3,977
Words 731
Sentences 49
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 8, 11, 19, 11, 21, 8, 10
Lines Amount 88
Letters per line (avg) 36
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 453
Words per stanza (avg) 104
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

3:40 min read
82

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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