No More Learning

Broadly speaking, Russian art and literature may be described as
springing from an ethical impulse and as having for their motive power
and _raison d'etre_ the tendency toward socio-political reform, in
contradistinction to the art and literature of Western culture, whose
motives and aims are primarily of an aesthetic nature and seek in art the
reconciliation of the dualism between spirit and matter.

Dostoievsky, whom Merejkovsky describes somewhere as the man with the
never-young face, the face "with its shadows of suffering and its
wrinkles of sunken-in cheeks . . . but that which gives to this face its
most tortured expression is its seeming immobility, the suddenly
interrupted impulse, the life hardened into a stone:" this Dostoievsky
and particularly his _Rodion Raskolnikov_ cycle became a profound
artistic experience to Rilke. The poor, the outcasts, the homeless ones
received for him a new significance, the significance of the isolated
figure placed in the mighty everchanging current of a life in which this
figure stands strong and solitary. In the poem entitled _Pont Du
Carrousel_, written in Paris a few years later, Rilke has visioned the
blind beggar aloof amid the fluctuating crowds of the metropolis.

Of Russia and its influence upon him, Rilke writes: "Russia became for
me the reality and the deep daily realization that reality is something
that comes infinitely slowly to those who have patience. Russia is the
country where men are solitary, each one with a world within himself,
each one profound in his humbleness and without fear of humiliating
himself, and because of that truly pious. Here the words of men are only
fragile bridges above their real life. "

The great symbols of Solitude and of Death enter into the poet's work.

* * * * *

In the first decade of the new century Rilke reached the height of his
art and with a few exceptions the poems represented in this volume are
selected from the poems which were published between the years 1900 and
1908. The ascent toward the acme of Rilke's art after the year 1900 is
as rapid as it is precipitous. Only a few years previous we read in
Advent:

"That is longing: To dwell in the flux of things,
To have no home in the present.
And these are wishes: gentle dialogues
Of the poor hours with eternity.
"

With _Das Buch der Bilder_ the dream is ended, the veil of mist is
lifted and before us are revealed pictures and images that rise before
our eyes in clear colourful contours. Whether the poet conjures from the
depths of myth _The Kings in Legends_, or whether we read from _The
Chronicle of a Monk_ the awe-inspiring description of _The Last Judgment
Day_, or whether in Paris on a Palm Sunday we see _The Maidens at
Confirmation_, the pictures presented stand out with the clearness and
finality of the typical.

It is a significant fact that Rilke dedicated this book to Gerhart
Hauptmann, "in love and gratitude for his Michael Kramer. " Hauptmann,
like Rilke in these poems, has placed before us great epic figures and
his art is so concentrated that often the simple expression of the
thought of one of his characters produces a shudder in the listener or
reader because in this thought there vibrates the suffering of an entire
social class and in it resounds the sorrow of many generations.

* * * * *

In _The Book of Pictures_, Rilke's art reaches its culmination on what
might be termed its monumental side. The visualization is elevated to
the impersonal objective level which gives to the rhythm of these poems
an imperturbable calm, to the figures presented a monumental erectness.
_The Men of the House of Colonna_, _The Czars_, _Charles XII Riding
Through the Ukraine_ are portrayed each with his individual historical
gesture, with a luminosity as strong as the colour and movement which
they gave to their time. In the mythical poem, _Kings in Legends_, this
concrete element in the art of Rilke has found perhaps its supreme
expression:

"Kings in old legends seem
Like mountains rising in the evening light.
They blind all with their gleam,
Their loins encircled are by girdles bright,
Their robes are edged with bands
Of precious stones--the rarest earth affords--
With richly jeweled hands
They hold their slender, shining, naked swords. "

There are in _The Book of Pictures_ poems in which this will to
concentrate a mood into its essence and finality is applied to purely
lyrical poems as in _Initiation_, that stands out in this volume like
"the great dark tree" itself so immeasurable is the straight line of its
aspiration reaching into the far distant silence of the night; or as in
the poem entitled _Autumn_, with its melancholy mood of gentle descent
in all nature.

In _The Book of Hours_, Rilke withdraws from the world not from
weariness but weighed down under the manifold conflicting visions. As
the prophet who would bring to the world a great possession must go
forth into the desert to be alone until the kingdom comes to him from
within, so the poet must leave the world in order to gain the deeper
understanding, to be face to face with God. The mood of _Das
Stunden-Buch_ is this mood of being face to face with God; it elevates
these poems to prayer, profound prayer of doubt and despair, exalted
prayer of reconciliation and triumph.

_The Book of Hours_ contains three parts written at different periods in
the poet's life: _The Book of a Monk's Life_ (1899); _The Book of
Pilgrimage_ (1901), and _The Book of Poverty and Death_ (1903), although
the entire volume was not published until several years later. _The Book
of Hours_ glows with a mystic fervour to know God, to be near him. In
this desire to approach the Nameless One, the young Brother in _The Book
of a Monk's Life_ builds up about God parables, images and legends
reminiscent of those of the 17th century Angelus Silesius, but sustained
by a more pregnant language because exalted by a more ardent visionary
force.