Rainer Maria Rilke: What birds plunge through is not the intimate space

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What birds plunge through is not the intimate space

Rainer Maria Rilke, Rainer Maria Rilke poetry, Secular or Eclectic, Secular or Eclectic poetry, poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry, poetry

by Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875 - 1926) Timeline

English version by
Stephen Mitchell

Original Language
German

What birds plunge through is not the intimate space
in which you see all forms intensified.
(Out in the Open, you would be denied
your self, would disappear into that vastness.)

Space reaches from us and construes the world:
to know a tree, in its true element,
throw inner space around it, from that pure
abundance in you. Surround it with restraint.
It has no limits. Not till it is held
in your renouncing is it truly there.

-- from Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by Stephen Mitchell

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Themes

Birds

Bower

Tree

Recommended Books

	Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by Stephen Mitchell
	The Best of Rilke: 72 Form-True Verse Translations, Translated by Walter W. Arndt
	The Book of Hours: Prayers to a Lowly God, by Rainer Maria Rilke / Translated by Annemarie Kidder
	Duino Elegies, by Rainer Maria Rilke / Translated by David Young
	Engendering Inspiration: Visionary Strategies in Rilke, Lawrence, and H.D., by Helen Sword

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