I have said that there is perhaps no great poet whose work is more sensual than that of Rilke, that the great spirituality of his work is forever and always rooted in the senses. I think this is obvious in all of his poetry. The subject matter, the images, the undertones, the figures—all are earthly, even earthy in resonance. His concern with things is itself an illustration of this. And his fascination with and portrayal of the great lovers, especially women, is well known, as, for example, in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Even the Duino Elegies, in relation to which one thinks of many things—the angel, lamentation, praise, etc.—, includes a surprisingly large amount of sexual poetry. And Rilke’s constant concern with death is another example, for what is more sensual and earthly than death? And we have seen some of this deep sensuality in his letters on love.
In spite of all this, however, few discussions of Rilke make anything at all of this specifically sexual dimension of his work. The reason, I think, is that his profound spirituality is so striking that commentators do not notice the sensual rootedness of that spirituality. The poems I have included here should redress the balance, for they are not only sensual but explicitly, even at times baldly, sexual. And yet all of Rilke’s perennial themes are present in these poems. Notice, for example, that the “seven phallic poems” present practically every major Rilkean figure: rose, tree, night, tower, death, column, child, space, call, mountain, even “figure” itself—and all with deliberately sexual connotations. It is almost as though Rilke were consciously and specifically reminding his readers that these are always and above all sexual symbols in his poetry (and, indeed, in all poetry); that, for example, the tower in the ninth of the Duino Elegies and the tree in the first of the Sonnets to Orpheus are fundamentally sexual, whatever else they may also be.
Another noticeable feature of these love poems is their remarkable combination of great passion and gentle care. It is as if Rilke’s poetic gestures were both wildly and softly caressing. To put it another way, Rilke’s unique joining of the masculine and the feminine, discussed earlier in his letters, is here profoundly portrayed in his poetry.
And yet, to be fair, one must say that Rilke’s own love relationships had something questionable in them at times. But is not that true of us all? Still, rightly or wrongly, we expect one who can articulate so beautiful and profound a vision somehow to live it a bit better than the rest of us. Especially a poet like Rilke, who concluded a description of an ancient fragment of sculpture by saying, “You must change your life” [“Du mußt dein Leben ändern”]. The relation between art and living is complex, especially in the modern period of aestheticism. I can only say here that my own sense of Rilke is that he was in no way an aesthete, nor is his poetry. That precisely in this area of the sensual, as in every other, he wanted art and life to connect, to transform each other. And that in his bearing this difficult task, he left us something most precious and indispensable, in spite of whatever questions might remain.
Finally, all of these poems were written by Rilke during his thirties and forties, that is, during the period of his most mature work. No youthful romantic effusions here. The poems are not only deeply sensual, they are tough-minded as well. They fully deserve to take their place alongside Donne’s great love poems. I only hope this presentation will help hasten that time. It should at least correct the longstanding impression, present in America and widespread in Europe, that Rilke’s poetry is somewhat precious and even effeminate.