elaine e. boney, the role of the paradox in rilke's sonette

The South Central Modern Language Association

The Role of the Paradox in Rilke's "Sonette"Author(s): Elaine E. BoneySource: The South Central Bulletin, Vol. 22, No. 4, Studies by Members of S-CMLA (Winter,1962), pp. 19-23Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of The South Central Modern LanguageAssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3188447 .

Accessed: 09/03/2014 10:13

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Johns Hopkins University Press and The South Central Modern Language Association are collaboratingwith JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The South Central Bulletin.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.177.218.24 on Sun, 9 Mar 2014 10:13:50 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=scmla

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=scmla

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3188447?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


The Role of the

PARADOX in RILIKE'S

"SON ETTE" ELAINE E. BONEY

The Sonette an Orpheus are closely related to the later Duineser Elegien in mood and conception. But whereas the Elegies grew from many years of devel- opment in Rilke's thought and mirror the consistent evolution of the concept of Being in the entire cycle, the Son- nets are the result of a few days of in- tensive work and reflect primarily the concluding results reached in the Ele- gies. Although the arrangement of the entire collection of Sonnets is much less strict than that of the Elegies, the struc- ture of each poem is very tight, partly because of the sonnet form. This form, with its terse division into octet and sestet, is particularly suited to the paradoxical nature of the material presented within the individual sonnets of this collection.

A paradox is defined in Webster's New International Dictionary as "any phe- nomenon or action with seemingly contradictory qualities or phases." The American College Dictionary adds to this definition the element of truth in defin- ing the paradox as "a statement or pro- position seemingly self-contradictory or absurd, and yet explicable as expressing a truth." In the Philosophical Fragments, which is devoted to the paradoxes of Christianity, Kierkegaard states that a paradox is the collision of the known and the unknown, the unknown being that which is absolutely different from the known.' Since the known is a function of reason and knowledge and the unknown is related to man by belief, a conflict between elements of reason and belief are likewise involved in a paradox.

All of these elements, the apparent contradiction, the known and the unknown, and reason and belief, are to be found in the paradoxes of Rilke's Son- nets. The central paradox may be stated as the age-old one of the finite and infinite, with the related ones of time and

eternity, being and becoming, the tem- poral and the absolute, life and death. The central problem of the Sonnets, and indeed of all of Rilke's later thought, deals with the nature of the cosmos and of man and with the relationship between cosmos and man, or between "Sein" and "Dasein." Since man's view of the cosmos changes with the factors which his view encompasses, these views may appear paradoxical. When human life is viewed in and by itself, it appears de- void of value because of its limitations, especially the ultimate one of death. Yet when it is viewed as part of a meaningful whole-which man can only surmise, but never comprehend-it suddenly acquires value. These two evaluations, which exclude and yet complement each other, must necessarily cause life to appear paradoxical to man, who cannot stand aside from his involvement in it, and is unable to sublimate them into a comprehensive whole. Life is thus a paradox to man, and it is this paradox which is inherent in the form and content of the Sonnets.

Man is not like Orpheus. Man is limit- ed and out of harmony with total Being, from which he feels separated because he cannot comprehend it: "Sein Sinn ist Zwiespalt."' Man can only surmise the totality in which he lives. He is always surrounded by a horizon which may re- treat or close in upon him in accord with his relationship to transcendence. For a living human being this horizon never vanishes except in momentary transcendence of the Self. Although man may

page nineteen



speak of total Being, it remains outside his realm of factual knowledge, unat- tainable by reason.'

The life-death polarity makes death seem final, the ultimate limitation. Such finality causes life to end in apparent nothingness, and this end is symbolized by the tombstone, a futile attempt to preserve personal identity after the end of life:

Errichtet keinen Denkstein. Lasst die Rose

nur jedes Jahr zu seinen Gunsten bliihn.

Denn Orpheus ists. Seine Metamor- phose

in dem und dem (G. W., III, 317)

The contrasting Orphic symbol of the rose points not to a final end, but to a metamorphosis. The Self, like the rose, is not lost in death; it merely changes in a final and absolute act of transcendence.

In life grief and sorrow are inevitable components of man's nature because of its inherent limitations. In recognizing their necessity as a part of his very nature and yet transcending them to praise life as meaningful and valuable, man functions as a true existence. Like Or- pheus, only the individual human being, standing despite his frailty in relation to transcendence, can truly capture the significance of life:

Nur wer die Leier schon hob auch unter Schatten, darf das unendliche Lob ahnend erstatten.

(G. W., III, 321) In the figure of Orpheus the para-

doxes which exist for mortal man are resolved because, in his search for Eury- dice, Orpheus transcended the border between life and death and thereby be- came familiar with both realms. This double character is also seen in another portion of the Orpheus legend, which Rilke uses in his twenty-sixth sonnet of the first cycle-the story of Orpheus' death. After his death and dismember- ment at the hands of infuriated Bacchic women, his head and lyre floated down the river Herbrus to the island of Lesbos,

ringing miraculously with music. Orpheus thus transcended physical reality in love, death, and song. Orphic song reaches beyond the limitations of the senses and physical reality to touch upon the essence of existence.

As a combination of man's immanent reality and pure or absolute Being, Or- pheus is beyond the limits of human perception. Rilke's Orpheus is a symbol, not a figure which man can perceive not even by the most prodigious flights of imagination. The whole, represented by Orpheus, surrounds man; it can never become an object or image for him. Al- though a mortal, subject to the limitations of the ordinary human being, Or- pheus possesses the ability to create an inner absolute from chaotic external reality, and this ability places him in direct relationship to transcendence. Unlike ordinary man he stands in the two worlds of immanent and transcendent reality which together form total Being:

Ist er ein Hiesiger? Nein, aus beiden Reichen erwuchs seine weite Natur.

(G. W., III, 318) The Orphic totality, of which man

may be aware and into which he may be integrated without loss or destruction of the Self, appears in many symbolic guises in the Sonnets. The hearing or listening ("H6ren") of the first Sonnet functions in this manner. Such listening is not the perception of the sound waves of the world of physical reality, but of silence of the heart ("Verschweigung"), where existence or pure Being lies. Such essence is perceived by the human ear as the beginning of existence-as a relationship between man and the absolute. On the level of existential communica- tion the human ear should be tuned to the wave-length of Orphic silence in order to transcend the mere world of sound. Man's sensory world is disharmonious in its dichotomy between subject and object: "Uns wird nur das Ldirmen angeboten" (G. W., III, 359). Man seeks knowledge of the tangible world: "denn wir wollen wissen" (G. W., III. 359), but harmony with the intangible world of the absolute eludes him. He reaches complete attainment of such harmony only in death, with re-

page twenty



lease of the inner absolute into cosmic Being:

Nur der Tote trinkt aus der hier von uns gehirten Quelle wenn der Gott ihm schweigend

winkt, dem Toten. (G. W., III, 359)

The paradoxical relationship between time and eternity and sound and silence receives additional treatment in a later poem, "Gong":

Dauer, aus Ablauf gepresst, um-gegossener Stern . : Gongl'

In this poem man is pictured as the gong, whose sound is perceived by a greater ear, that of total Being. This implies man's significance for the cosmos. If he produced only sound waves, they would be lost for the ear of the universe, but he produces in his inner Being an absolute perceptible in the whole:

Nicht mehr fiir Ohren . .: Klang, der, wie ein tieferes Ohr, uns, scheinbar H6rende, hart. Umkehr der Riume. Entwurf innerer Welten im Frein . . Only the song of the true artist such

as Orpheus, by which the wall of man's limitations can be breached in transcending the Self and thus attaining harmony with pure Being, of which man is a vital part, can heal and unite a disharmonious world:

Einzig das Lied iiberm Land heiligt und feiert.

(G. W., III, 331) Orpheus' task of proclaiming transfor- mation of the Self prepares man for a world and a cosmos where change pre- vails. Whereas mortal men fail to recog- nize the positive aspects of absolute limitation in suffering, love, and death, Or- pheus must reveal in these aspects of life the ultimate basis of existence. The ordinary person in his senseless, pur- poseless life seeks knowledge of the world about him: "Schreien den Zufall" (G. W., III, 371). In the raucous dis- harmony of his uncoordinated search he remains almost totally oblivious to the higher demands of the spirit-the reali- zation that all of life is meaningless un- less correlated with the absolute. Rilke

appeals to Orpheus to interfere creatively in man's senseless noise, to reduce him to the silence where existence begins, to make him receptive to Orphic song, to the Absolute:

Ordne die Schreier, singender Gott! dass sie rauschend

erwachen, tragend als Stromung das Haupt

und die Leier. (G. W., III, 371)

Like Orpheus, growing plants and trees signify the presence of forces beyond the physical world. Flowers, fruit, and grapes perish each year, but appear again the following year. They do not vanish completely; transcendent forces change but do not destroy them:

Wir gehen um mit Blume, Wein- blatt, Frucht.

Sie sprechen nicht die Sprache nur des Jahres.

Aus Dunkel steigt ein buntes Offen- bares

(G. W., III, 326) Each fruit and flower is-like Orpheus- a combination of life and death. It is a paradoxical unit of specific, unique life and of recurring existence; of the bounty of the earth and inevitable ripening to the end. This is the essence of the ap- ple which each person should experience and express: "Wagt zu sagen, was ihr Apfel nennt" (G. W., III, 325).

In nature, as in the figure of Orpheus, the paradoxes which astound man are resolved. Unconscious of change and death, the earth passes through fall and winter, preparing for spring in eternal metamorphosis. In early spring the awakening of life is felt in the air. To man it appears new each time, and each time it gives bountifully to man in spite of his in- completeness. Although winter is still present in this early spring, reminding man that death is everpresent in life, spring arrives unfailingly, overcoming winter's dormancy:

Jenes so oft dir schon Gekommene scheint dir

zu kommen wieder wie Neues. Immer erhofft, nahmst du es niemals. Es hat dich

genommen. (G. W., III, 370)

page twenty-one



Even when the barriers of time and space conceal ultimate reality from man, and he cannot comprehend the significance of his situation as a changing and seemingly useless atom in the eternal cosmos, the world continues to fulfill his needs. It does not abandon him to the physical limitations which he ex- periences so painfully:

Selbst wenn sich der Bauer sorgt und handelt,

wo die Saat in Sommer sich ver- wandelt,

Wir Gewaltsamen, wir wiihren schenkt.

( G. W., III, 324) The earth constantly presents man

with indications of the function of change as metamorphosis within an eternal whole rather than as final termina- tion of life. In particular, plants-each one grown to completion-have been selected by Rilke as symbols of existence. The short-lived anemone speaks of complete receptivity to eternal Being as it opens its petals wide to the light of the heavens. But for man such free and open receptivity to absolute Being comes only with difficulty:

Wir Gewaltsamen, wir wiihren linger.

Aber wann, in welchem aller Leben, sind wir endlich offen und Emp-

ffinger? (G. W., III, 345)

In the seventh Sonnet of the second cycle the flowers which have been plucked are compared to the maidens who plucked them-both the flowers and the maidens will die, although the flowers placed in vase and reviving water will shed a final splendor of bloom and beau- ty. As the flowers are like the maidens in their inevitable death, the maidens must be like the flowers in finding that death is a metamorphosis rather than an absolute end.

Flowing water is, like nature, a symbol for the resolution of the paradox in totality; it is at the same time constantly changing and constantly the same. In a fountain the bowl is like an ear listening in its sleep to the timeless message

of the earth-that death is only a phase in eternal metamorphosis:

O Brunnen-Mund, du gebender, du Mund,

der unersch6pflich Eines, Reines spricht,-

Dies (das Geffiss) ist das schlafend hingelegte Ohr,

das Marmor-Ohr, in das du immer sprichst.

(G. W., III, 358) The jug filled by the stream of water is nothing but an interruption, temporary and man-made, compared with the ever- lasting, bountiful flow of the water. But the water fills the jug freely and gener- ously, giving of its riches to man, just as the earth does.

Like nature, man is innately creative. In breathing he not only creates life- death is marked by a cessation of breathing-but also partakes of universal existence, "Weltinnenraum." The air of the "Weltinnenraum" is transformed into part of the individual, and many places of the "Weltinnenraum" have been within the individual. Breathing is rhythinic and harmonious; through its creative force man stands in relationship to the cosmos and brings pure Being into his measured life:

Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht! Immerfort um das eigne Sein rein eingetauschter Weltraum.

Gegenwicht, in dem ich mich rhythmisch ereigne.

(G. W., III, 341) Man, like Orpheus, is by nature of

both worlds, even though he may have developed a feeling of isolation and sep- aration from the completely different world of the absolute.

A static condition never creates; for creative productivity, action and change are required. Change is therefore desir- able since it is a primary condition of life and basic part of man's role in the scheme of creative activity, which is his very raison d'Atre. To look for per- manence in a changing world is to seek certain destruction, but in the process of eternal change the end, instead of being absolute, marks in metamorphosis a new beginning:

page twenty-two



Wolle die Wandlung. 0 sei fiir die Flamme begeistert,

drin sich ein Ding dir entzieht, das mit Verwandlungen prunkt;

jener entwerfende Geist, welcher das Irdische meistert,

liebt in dem Schwung der Figur nichts wie den wendenden Punkt.

(G. W., III, 354) As part of a cosmic unity change itself is eternal. As in all change, the truest mode of existence is not in the before and the after, but in the very moment of transition, the moment when the before and the after touch in an absolute. In Rilke this acute experience of change leads to an awareness of the coming, an ever-awake state of anticipation, wherein the Self senses the infinite universe of which it is a harmonious part:

Sei-und wisse zugleich des Nicht- Seins Bedingung,

den unendlichen Grund deiner in- nigen Schwingung,

dass du vIllig vollziehst dieses ein- zige Mal.

Zu de gebrauchten sowohl, wie zumm dumpfen und stummen

Vorrat der vollen Natur, den un- sliglichen Summen,

zUihle dich jubelnd hinzu und ver- nichte die Zahl.

(G. W., III, 356) Orpheus symbolizes the ever-creative

principle of existence, having undergone the metamorphosis of death. His function is pointing out the nature of man's limit- ed Being, "Dasein," as a segment of total Being, "Sein." For Orpheus the two concepts exist in perfect harmony; for man their relationship is one of ten- sion, of discord. Orpheus embodies in

himself the unity which man can envisage only as a paradox, but which he must seek to understand and express as the very basis of human life.

These Sonnets are concerned with the paradoxical nature of human life, with the paradox frequently expressed in the sonnet form itself. The octet may express the idea of man's limitations-in time, space, and death-whereas the sestet shows the obverse side of the problem- the significance of these limitations when they are viewed, not from within human life alone, but as part of an encom- passing whole. Totality, however, is not static, but dynamic, gathering its very eternity from the changes which occur within it. Change, which appears to man primarily as an expression of his painful transience, thus becomes the great in- centive for him to lift his vision beyond himself, to transcend himself, and thus to enrich his life with the dynamic, creative forces which are the very essence of the cosmos:

Als die, die wir sind, als die Trei- benden,

gelten wir doch bei bleibenden Kriiften als g6ttlicher Brauch.

(C. W., III, 372) Texas Technological College

NOTES 1Soeren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Frag.

ments, trans. David F. Swens'on (Princeton University Press, 1946), pp. 31 f.

2Rainer Maria Rilke, Gesammelte Werke (Leipzig, Insel-Verlag, 1930), Vol. III, 315. Subsequent references to this edition will be given with the quotation and abbreviated G. W.

8Karl Jaspers, Philosophie, 2nd ed. (Berlin, Springer, 1948), pp. 709 f.

4Rainer Maria Rilke, Gedichte, 1906-1925 (Wiesbaden. Insel-Verlag, 1953), p. 187.

5lbid., p. 187.

page twenty-three



elaine e. boney, the role of the paradox in rilke's sonette

Documents