Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926 / Prague / Czech Republic)
Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke : 8 / 124
Archaic Torso of Apollo
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Submitted: Friday, January 03, 2003
Read poems about / on: change, star, power, smile, dark, life, running
Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke : 8 / 124
People who read Rainer Maria Rilke also read
Top 500 Poems
-
Phenomenal Woman
Maya Angelou
-
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
-
Still I Rise
Maya Angelou
-
If You Forget Me
Pablo Neruda
-
Dreams
Langston Hughes
-
Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe
-
If
Rudyard Kipling
-
A Dream Within A Dream
Edgar Allan Poe
-
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost
-
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou

the poem seems to be suffused with the idea that a piece of art is a whole in itself. Rilke turns the beheaded Apollo into a living statue that at the end of the poem appears to be looking back at the admirer. there is this sensation that each part of the incomplete sculpture has a life of its own as the poet posits his eyes on them; and after a while this life that the poet communicates to the immobile statue is stolen by it to make a part of itself...
This translation is by Stephen Mitchell. It should be credited here.
Rilke wrote in german. One of my favorite poems, I love the last line 'you must change your life.' Rilke was a master. His years with Rodin certainly paid off, I love how he describes the torso. Also, the inner brillance, and how when looking at a masterpiece it reminds one of greek gods.
Rilke wrote in English?
Or did Babelfish translate this?