New Poems
The new poems are a two-part collection of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke.
The first, Elisabeth and Karl von der Heydt dedicated band was born 1902-1907 and appeared in the same year in the Insel Verlag in Leipzig, the second, Auguste Rodin been thought ( New Poems The other part ) was completed in 1908 and published by the same publisher.
The collection is considered next to the Malte Laurids Brigge as the main work of his middle period, which clearly stands out from its previous and following later production. It marks a shift from the emotive poetry ecstatic subjectivity and interiority as prevalent as in his three-part Book of Hours, the objective language of poetry thing. With this new poetic orientation, which was influenced by the visual arts, especially Rodin, Rilke is considered one of the most important poets of literary modernism.
With the exception of eight written in Capri poems Rilke wrote most settled in Paris and Meudon. At the beginning of both volumes he presented Formerly Apollo and the Archaic Torso of Apollo verses on sculptures of the poet God.
Background
Since the collection of the full context of meaning as well as lack an overarching general concept, there is no cycle of poems in the strict sense; on the other hand may not be closed on an arbitrariness of the compilation because despite the great diversity of forms and genres everything is permeated by a coherent design principle - the thing regarding lyrical speech, which is bound to the experience Looked reality.
Had the thing of the Parnassian poetry to Edward Moerike and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer not know how nor the romantic poetry, oriented to the music, but the visual arts, this reference point is also noticeable in Rilke's poems; first in the towering figure of the sculptor Rodin, about which he initially wrote a monograph and whose private secretary he was, later in the encounter with the work of Paul Cézanne, for example during the Paris Cézanne exhibition of 1907.
Origin and language crisis
In the poems themselves impressions reflect that Rilke learned in this environment, experiences that he numerous letters - confided in great wealth of detail and from which the impact on its own, in the things of reality - such as Lou Andreas - Salomé and Clara Westhoff oriented art shows. Also at the end of a long development process: A year after he had finished the monograph on Rodin, he told Lou Andreas - Salomé, how desperate he was looking for a craft basis for his art, a tool that should give his art the necessary solidity. He graduated from two possibilities: the new craft should not be the language itself, which would be " to find a better recognition of their inner life " in. The humanistic way of education, the Hugo von Hofmannsthal had embarked on the foundation " to look for in a good inherited and propagated culture," he did not want to follow also. The poetic craft should rather be seeing itself, the ability to "look better to look at, with more patience, with more sinking. "
Rilke was fascinated by both the artisanal precision as the focus on the subject, a way of working that he could observe common in Rodin. The form of bondage art and the chance to show her the surface of an object and to have at the same time guess its essence, were reflected in the two volumes of poetry.
Lou Andreas Salomé over he described Rodin as a lonely old man, " sunk in itself full of juices is like an old tree in autumn. " Rodin had his heart " given a depth and its impact afar is like a mountain middle. " For Rilke, the actual discovery Rodin was the liberation of the land and the equally unintentional design of the sculpture from the so -exempt forms. He described how Rodin did not follow a senior concept, but the smallest elements of their own development in accordance with, masterfully designed.
While Rodin to be closed over the unimportant, he may be open to reality, where " Animals and humans ... touch him like things. " When constantly receiving lover escape him nothing and as a craftsman he had a concentrated " type look. " It is nothing " uncertain for it to an object which serves him as a model ... the thing is determined, the art - thing must be even more specific, taken away from it all by chance caught any ambiguity, enhoben the time and if the space is it has become permanent, capable of eternity. The model seems to be the art - thing. "
Had Rilke experienced in Worpswede the landscape " as the language for his confessions" and met with Rodin, the " language of the hands ," said Cézanne led him into the realm of colors. The special color perception, Rilke developed in France in particular, demonstrates his famous sonnet Blue Hydrangea, in which he shows the interplay almost detached, as if alive -appearing colors.
Rilke's turn to the visual evidence of a lack of confidence in the language and is related to the language crisis of modernity, which is indicated in the Chandos letter Hofmannsthal, in which he addresses the reasons for the profound voice of doubt. The language, Rilke, offers " much too coarse pliers" in order to tap into the soul can; the word can not be " the outward sign " for his " our real life." As the honorable of Hofmannsthal, Rilke Rilke also distinguished between a poetic and metaphorical language of things and an abstract, rational conceptual language.
Special
The New Poems of Rilke show great sensitivity to the world of objective reality. The ascetic thing regarding his verse was the frank discussion of his soul no longer to fine mood and emotional states and so clear even in the Book of Hours form of prayer resigned.
Descriptive in the starting position, the boundary between viewer and object dissolves while viewing and calls forth new connections. This thing mysticism Rilke did not intoxicating overcome the clarity of consciousness, however, especially as it is often the ( " conscious ", architectural planning presupposing ) form of the sonnet made use of, the turning points are, however, dubbed by the musical language. Unlike Moerike and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer - ( paradigmatic is the Roman fountain ) - Rilke wanted items not merely describe or objectify caused by her moods; the thing should rather be charged as it were with a special meaning and thus released from conventional space and time references. This is confirmed as the lines of unrhymed poem The Rose Bowl, which completes the first part: " And the movement in the roses, see: / gestures from such a small deflection angle, / that they were invisible, their / rays were not going apart in the universe. "
As he described in a brief 1919 essay published primal sound, he wanted to expand with the means of art the senses to return things to take their own value, their " sheer size " and of avoiding the purposive-rational availability by the recipient. He believed in a higher overall context of all that exists, which is attainable only through art, which transcends the world: the " perfect poem" could " arise only under the condition that the five levers simultaneously challenged world supernatural under a certain aspect on that level appear, which is precisely that of the poem. "
Significance and reception
After the research was the collection of Rilke long time compared to his later works, such as the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus neglected, it came in the last decades to a counter-movement. Within his oeuvre, the new poems were now regarded as his most important contribution to modern literature and received most intense. They document his ideal of poetry thing, the objects, refers primarily to ( external ) works of painting, sculpture and architecture to animals from the Paris Jardin des Plantes and landscapes.
In poems such as the Panther, his most famous work, or the archaic torso of Apollo Rilke approaches the ideal of this genus most clearly. In this sonnet is the looking into a transcendent symbol, the contemplative subject and seen object wraps: Although the torso is missing the head, glows the whole statue from inside, radiates towards the viewer like a star and leads to an epiphanic Damascus experience ". .. because there is no place / that does not see you. You must change your life. "
The new poems also subjected to opposing interpretations up. Part of the research saw in them the reconciling interpretation of human existence or pointed - as Walther Rehm - ". Icy glory " on their "All those things that fountains and marble carts, the stairs to the orangery, the courtesan and the alchemist, the beggar and the Saints - none knows deeply from the other. All they are unbezüglich as random and recessed equal statues or sculptures, lonely side by side, in the artfully assembled space of this collection of poems, almost like in a museum. "
Since Rilke not to the objects as such, but their representation went, it was natural to interpret his poetry phenomenologically. So pointed especially Kate Hamburger indicate a connection to the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, in 1907 with his lecture thing and space dealt with this question.
Theodor W. Adorno was concerned at the edge also with Rilke and was bothered by the " talkative decorators of " and the tendency to verse and rhyme to give in to what Rilke differs from formstrengeren Stefan George. The dialectic of particular and universal concerns for Adorno, the lyrical language: So very good poem expressing the subjective and freed himself from the language conventions of society, so little the General is yet repaid from him.
With the " idiosyncrasy of the lyrical spirit against the superior force of things," the poet react to "the reification of the world, the rule of goods over people," what could also be found in Rilke's poetry. Meanwhile Ding Poetry designated Adorno disparagingly as "Ding cult " which belong in this " magic circle " and with that he try " into increase even the strange things in the subjective- pure expression and dissolve their strangeness metaphysical credited to them. " The " aesthetic weakness of this Ding cult, the secretive gesture, the mixing of religion and arts and crafts tools, however, of the real reification, the " let gild more from any lyrical aura.