Entrance

“Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke (1902)

Like “Entrance,” this short poem appeared in The Book of Pictures. As always with Rilke, he wants to go beyond the simple appearance of things and access the raw truth. He describes how in autumn everything is falling, not only the leaves from the trees, but also, somehow, the earth is falling from the stars. Yet there is some unnamed entity that holds all that falls tenderly in his hands. The implication is that nothing is lost or destroyed and even the cycles of change are held safely in a benevolent eternity.

“Evening” by Rainer Maria Rilke (1906)

This poem appeared in the second edition of The Book of Pictures in 1906. As in “Entrance,” the poet probes the full dimensions of his being. As evening comes, his sense of his own being becomes sharper and more distinctive. He seems to belong to both time and eternity; part of him is closed in (like the house he lives in), and another part is like the unboundedness of the night sky. Belonging to both spheres of life, he goes back and forth in each moment between these two realities, characterized as “stone” and “star.”

“Moving Forward” by Rainer Maria Rilke (1902)

This is another poem from The Book of Pictures that explores the hidden depths of life. (Rilke seemed to be constitutionally incapable of writing anything superficial or shallow.) The poet’s life, he explains in the nine lines of the poem, is becoming more expanded. He is more at home amidst what cannot be reached by language and he also has more kinship with all life through his senses and his feelings. All this, he would no doubt argue, makes him more able to fulfill his calling, which is to produce poetry of genuine insight and feeling.

“In the Drawing Room” by Rainer Maria Rilke (1907)

In this poem from New Poems, the speaker and others sit in a drawing room (a reception room in a private house). The paintings displayed on the walls show gentlemen and ladies from the past, dressed up in their finery. The speaker acknowledges that such people allow “us”—himself and other poets and artists—to live as they choose, but they themselves lived superficial lives, motivated by the desire to “bloom” and become beautiful. These are the people who fit easily into society and reflect its values. They do not, however, understand creative artists, who prefer “ripening” to blooming, which “demands that we be dark . . . and take great care.” As in “Entrance,” the creative artist steps away from the familiar and the well known (unlike the society gentlemen and ladies in the portraits) because he or she embodies the deeper values of life and does not have much to say to the fashionable members of high society. (Interestingly, the word “ripening” or “ripens” occurs in both poems; the German verb in both cases is “reifen”.)

“The Thought Fox” by Ted Hughes (1957)

Like “Entrance,” this poem by English poet Hughes is about the creative process, particularly about writing a poem. At night in the darkness, as in Rilke’s poem, the creative imagination begins to stir within the poet, who sits alone in his room with pen in hand. What the tree is in Rilke’s poem, the fox is in Hughes’s.