Rilke’s Openings

Reading meant a great deal to Rilke, and though he sometimes let himself slip into the thought that art is only of good to the artist and not to anyone else, or supposed that art was not at all concerned with having an ‘effect’, his poems contradict this in the apparent requirements they make of their readers. This introductory chapter on reading Rilke takes a cross-section of the work by focussing on the opening poems to the key collections from Larenopfer onwards. It appears from these poems that Rilke sees reading as an existential act involving risk and the exposure to change, and this is further supported by reading a handful of poems explicitly to do with reading. As well as giving interpretations of major poems such as ‘Archaïscher Torso Apollos’, this chapter thus prepares the ground for a reading of Rilke as a whole and reflects on the particular experience of reading Rilke.