Analysis of The Neighbor
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)
Strange violin, why do you follow me?
In how many foreign cities did you
speak of your lonely nights and those of mine.
Are you being played by hundreds? Or by one?
Do in all great cities men exist
who tormented and in deep despair
would have sought the river but for you?
And why does your playing always reach me?
Why is it that I am always neighbor
to those lost ones who are forced to sing
and to say: Life is infinitely heavier
than the heaviness of all things.
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
Scheme | ABXX XXBA CDCX D |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1001111101 0110101011 1111010111 11101110111 101110101 11000101 111010111 011110111 111111110 111111111 011111000100 101111 0101101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 499 |
Words | 98 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 1 |
Lines Amount | 13 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 100 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 29 sec read
- 278 Views
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