No More Learning

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. The motif of _The Monk's Life_ is expressed in the poem beginning
with the lines:

"I live my life in circles that grow wide
And endlessly unroll. "

Through the grey cell of the young Monk there flash in luminous
magnificence the colours of the great renaissance masters, for he feels
in Titian, in Michelangelo, in Raphael the same fervour that animates
him; they, too, are worshippers of the same God.

There are poems in _The Book of Pilgrimage_ of the stillness of a
whispered prayer in a great Cathedral and there are others that carry in
their exultation the music of mighty hymns. The visions in this second
book are no less ecstatic though less glowingly colourful; they have
withdrawn inward and have brought a great peace and a great faith as in
the poem of God, whose very manifestation is the quietude and hush of a
silent world:

"By day Thou art the Legend and the Dream
That like a whisper floats about all men,
The deep and brooding stillnesses which seem,
After the hour has struck, to close again.
And when the day with drowsy gesture bends
And sinks to sleep beneath the evening skies,
As from each roof a tower of smoke ascends
So does Thy Realm, my God, around me rise. "

The last part of _The Book of Hours_, _The Book of Poverty and Death_,
is finally a symphony of variations on the two great symbolic themes in
the work of Rilke. As Christ in the parable of the rich young man
demands the abandonment of all treasures, so in this book the poet sees
the coming of the Kingdom, the fulfilment of all our longings for a
nearness to God when we have become simple again like little children
and poor in possessions like God Himself.