Sonnets to Orpheus
by Rainer Maria Rilke (1923)
2023 reads, 11.75/12 (Interlude II):
To finish my Gravity's Rainbow interlude, I read the final major work of Rilke I had yet to read, The Sonnets to Orpheus. These are a series of 55 sonnets, written in two linked cycles (representing life and death?), written in 1922 in the span of about three weeks.
These poems are described as religious, but I would instead broaden that to spiritual. Like, intensely spiritual. This mysticism is mixed with themes of solitude, life & death, and the arts. In Greek myth, Orpheus was a bard, so symbols of music (specifically a lyre) are interspersed throughout these poems. These symbols are used as a device to represent creating poetry, but I felt it applied to any creative endeavor.
“He alone who has known the roots of the willow can bend the willow-branch into a lyre.”
Like the Elegies, these poems are as deep as you want them to be. You can let the words flow over you, or you can do as much digging as you want, line-by-line, picking apart the allegories, personification, and symbolism throughout. However, I found them to be more readable on the surface than the Duino Elegies. If you are looking to get into Rilke, I would start here (or his Letters to a Young Poet).
“Oh unheard starry music! Isn’t your sound protected from all static by the ordinary business of our days?”